The Project Gutenberg EBook of Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1,
No. 2, July, 1850., by Various
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Title: Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850.
Author: Various
Release Date: February 5, 2010 [EBook #31187]
Language: English
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HARPER'S
NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
No. II.--JULY, 1850.--VOL. I.
[From the London Eclectic Review.]
THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
When "Gilfillan's Gallery" first appeared, a copy of it was sent to an
eminent lay-divine, the first sentence of whose reply was, "You have
sent me a _list of shipwrecks_." It was but too true, for that "Gallery"
contains the name of a Godwin, shipwrecked on a false system, and a
Shelley, shipwrecked on an extravagant version of that false system--and
a Hazlitt, shipwrecked on no system at all--and a Hall, driven upon the
rugged reef of madness--and a Foster, cast high and dry upon the dark
shore of Misanthropy--and an Edward Irving, inflated into sublime idiocy
by the breath of popular favor, and in the subsidence of that breath,
left to roll at the mercy of the waves, a mere log--and lastly, a
Coleridge and a De Quincy, stranded on the same poppy-covered coast, the
land of the "Lotos-eaters," where it is never morning, nor midnight, nor
full day, but always afternoon.
Wrecks all these are, but all splendid and instructive withal. And we
propose now--repairing to the shore, where the last great argosy, Thomas
De Quincey, lies half bedded in mud--to pick up whatever of noble and
rare, of pure and permanent, we can find floating around. We would speak
of De Quincey's history, of his faults, of his genius, of his works, and
of his future place in the history of literature. And when we reflect on
what a _mare magnum_ we are about to show to many of our readers, we
feel for the moment as if it were new to us also, as if _we_ stood--
"Like stout Cortea, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific,
----and all his men
Gathered round him with a wild surmise,
Silent, upon a peak of Darien."
We can not construct a regular biography of this remarkable man; neither
the time for this has come, nor have the materials been, as yet, placed
within reach of us, or of any one else. But we may sketch the outlines
of what we know, which is indeed but little.
Thomas De Quincey is the son of a Liverpool merchant. He is one of
several children, the premature loss of one of whom he has, in his
"Suspiria de Profundis" (published in "Blackwood") most plaintively and
eloquently deplored. His father seems to have died early. Guardians were
appointed over him, with whom he contrived to quarrel, and from whose
wing (while studying at Oxford) he fled to London. There he underwent a
series of surprising adventures and severe sufferings, which he has
recounted in the first part of his "Opium Confessions." On one occasion,
while on the point of death by starvation, his life was saved by the
intervention of a poor street-stroller, of whom he afterward lost sight,
but whom, in the strong gratitude of his heart, he would pursue into the
central darkness of a London brothel, or into the deeper darkness of the
grave. Part of the same dark period of his life was spent in Wales,
where he subsisted now on the hospitality of the country people, and
now, poor fellow, on hips and haws. He was at last found out by some of
his friends, and remanded to Oxford. There he formed a friendship with
Christopher North, which has continued unimpaired to this hour.
Both--besides the band of kindred genius--had that of profound
admiration, then a rare feeling, for the poetry of Wordsworth. In the
course of this part of his life he visited Ireland, and was introduced
soon afterward to OPIUM--fatal friend, treacherous ally--root of that
tree called Wormwood, which has overshadowed all his after life. A blank
here occurs in his history. We find him next in a small white cottage in
Cumberland--married--studying Kant, drinking laudanum, and dreaming the
most wild and wondrous dreams which ever crossed the brain of mortal.
These dreams he recorded in the "London Magazine," then a powerful
periodical, conducted by John Scott, and supported by such men as
Hazlitt, Reynolds, and Allan Cunningham. The "Confessions," when
published separately, ran like wildfire, although from their anonymous
form they added nothing at the time to the author's fame. Not long after
their publication, Mr. De Quincey came down to Scotland, where he has
continued to reside, wandering from place to place, contributing to
periodicals of all sorts and sizes--to "Blackwood," "Tait," "North
British Review," "Hogg's Weekly Instructor," as well as writing for the
"Encyclopædia Britannica," and publishing one or two independent works,
such as "Klosterheim," a tale, and the "Logic of Political Economy." His
wife has been long dead. Three of his daughters, amiable and excellent
persons, live in the sweet village of Lasswade, in the neighborhood of
Edinburgh; and there he is, we believe, at present himself.
From his very imperfect sketch of De Quincey's history, there rush into
our minds some rather painful reflections. It is painful to see a
"Giant mind broken by sorrows unspoken,
And woes."
It is painful to see a glorious being transfigured into a rolling thing
before the whirlwind. It is painful to be compelled to inscribe upon
such a shield the word "Desdichado." It is painful to remember how much
misery must have passed through that heart, and how many sweat drops of
agony must have stood, in desolate state, upon that brow. And it is most
painful of all to feel that guilt, as well as misery, has been here, and
that the sowing of the wind preceded the reaping of the whirlwind.
Such reflections were mere sentimentalism, unless attended by such
corollaries as these: 1st. Self-control ought to be more than at present
a part of education, sedulously and sternly taught, for is it not the
geometry of life? 2dly. Society should feel more that she is responsible
for the wayward children of genius, and ought to seek more than she does
to soothe their sorrows, to relieve their wants, to reclaim their
wanderings, and to search, as with lighted candles, into the causes of
their incommunicable misery. Had the public, twenty years ago, feeling
Mr. De Quincey to be one of the master spirits of the age, and,
therefore, potentially, one of its greatest benefactors, inquired
deliberately into his case, sought him out, put him beyond the reach of
want, encouraged thus his heart, and strengthened his hand, rescued him
from the mean miseries into which he was plunged, smiled approvingly
upon the struggles he was making to conquer an evil habit--in one word,
_recognized_ him, what a different man had he been now, and over what
magnificent wholes had we been rejoicing, in the shape of his works,
instead of deploring powers and acquirements thrown away, in rearing
towers of Babel, tantalizing in proportion to the magnitude of their
design, and the beauty of their execution. Neglected and left alone as a
corpse in the shroud of his own genius, a fugitive, though not a
vagabond, compelled day after day to fight absolute starvation at the
point of his pen, the marvel is, that he has written so much which the
world may not willingly let die. _But_, it is the world's fault that the
writings it now recognizes, and may henceforth preserve on a high shelf,
are rather the sublime ravings of De Quincey drunk, than the calm,
profound cogitations of De Quincey sober. The theory of capital
punishments is much more subtle and widely ramified than we might at
first suppose. On what else are many of our summary critical and moral
judgments founded? Men find a man guilty of a crime--they vote him for
that one act a purely pernicious member of society, and they turn him
off. So a Byron quarrels with his wife--a Coleridge loses his balance,
and begins to reel and totter like Etna in an earthquake--a Burns, made
an exciseman, gradually descends toward the low level of his trade--or
a De Quincey takes to living on laudanum, and the public, instead of
seeking to reform and re-edify each brilliant begun ruin, shouts out,
"Raze, raze it to its foundation." Because the sun is eclipsed, they
would howl him away! Because one blot has lighted on an imperishable
page, they would burn it up! Let us hope, that as our age is fast
becoming ashamed of those infernal sacrifices called executions, so it
shall also soon forbear to make its most gifted sons pass through the
fire to Moloch, till it has tested their _thorough_ and _ineradicable_
vileness.
Mr. De Quincey's faults we have spoken of in the plural--we ought,
perhaps, rather to have used the singular number. In the one word
excitement, assuming the special form of opium--the "insane root"--lies
the _gravamen_ of his guilt, as, also, of Coleridge's. Now, we are far
from wishing to underrate the evil of this craving. But we ought to
estimate Mr. De Quincey's criminality with precision and justice; and,
while granting that he used opium to excess--an excess seldom
paralleled--we must take his own explanation of the circumstances which
led him to begin its use, and of the effects it produced on him. He did
not begin it to multiply or intensify his pleasures, still less to lash
himself with its fiery thongs into a counterfeit inspiration, but to
alleviate bodily pain. It became, gradually and reluctantly, a necessity
of his life. Like the serpents around Laocoon, it confirmed its grasp,
notwithstanding the wild tossings of his arms, the spasmodic resistance
of every muscle, the loud shouts of protesting agony; and, when
conquered, he lay like the overpowered Hatteraick in the cave, sullen,
still in despair, breathing hard, but perfectly powerless. Its effects
on him, too, were of a peculiar kind. They were not brutifying or
blackguardizing. He was never intoxicated with the drug in his life;
nay, he denies its power to intoxicate. Nor did it at all weaken his
intellectual faculties any more than it strengthened them. We have heard
poor creatures consoling themselves for their inferiority by saying,
"Coleridge would not have written so well but for opium." "No thanks to
De Quincey for his subtlety--he owes it to opium." Let such persons
swallow the drug, and try to write the "Suspiria," or the "Aids to
Reflection."
Coleridge and De Quincey were great in spite of their habits. Nay, we
believe that on truly great intellects stimulus produces little
inspiration at all. Can opium think? can beer imagine? It is De Quincey
in opium--not opium in De Quincey--that ponders and that writes. The
stimulus is only the _occasional cause_ which brings the internal power
into play; it may sometimes dwarf the giant, but it can never really
elevate the dwarf.
The evil influences of opium on De Quincey were of a different, but a
very pernicious sort: they weakened his will; they made him a colossal
slave to a tiny tyrant; they shut him up (like the Genii in the "Arabian
Tales") in a phial filled with dusky fire; they spread a torpor over
the energies of his body; they closed up or poisoned the natural sources
of enjoyment; the air, the light, the sunshine, the breeze, the
influences of spring, lost all charm and power over him. Instead of
these, snow was welcomed with an unnatural joy; storm embraced as a
brother; and the stern scenery of night arose like a desolate temple
round his ruined spirit. If his heart was not utterly hardened, it was
owing to its peculiar breadth and warmth. At last his studies were
interrupted, his peace broken, his health impaired, and then came the
noon of his night; a form of gigantic gloom, swaying an "ebon sceptre,"
stood over him in triumph, and it seemed as if nothing less than a
miraculous intervention could rescue the victim from his power.
But the victim was not an ordinary one. Feeling that hell had come, and
that death was at hand, he determined, by a mighty effort, to arise from
his degradation. For a season his struggles were great and impotent, as
those of the giants cast down by Jove under Etna. The mountain shook,
the burden tottered, but the light did not at first appear. Nor has he
ever, we suspect, completely emancipated himself from his bondage; but
he has struggled manfully against it, and has cast off such a large
portion of the burden that it were injustice not to say of him that he
is now FREE.
It were ungracious to have dwelt, even so long, upon the errors of De
Quincey, were it not that, first, his own frankness of disclosures frees
us from all delicacy; and that, secondly, the errors of such a man, like
the cloud of the pillar, have two sides--his darkness may become our
light--his sin our salvation. It may somewhat counteract that craving
cry for excitement, that everlasting Give, give, so much the mistake of
the age, to point strongly to this conspicuous and transcendent victim,
and say to his admirers, "Go ye and do _otherwise_."
We pass gladly to the subject of his genius. That is certainly one of
the most singular in its power, variety, culture, and eccentricity, our
age has witnessed. His intellect is at once solid and subtle, reminding
you of veined and figured marble, so beautiful and evasive in aspect,
that you must touch ere you are certain of its firmness. The motion of
his mind is like that of dancing, but it is the dance of an elephant, or
of a Polyphemus, with his heavy steps, thundering down the music to
which he moves. Hence his humor often seems forced in motion, while
always fine in spirit. The contrast between the slow march of his
sentences, the frequent gravity of his spirit, the recondite masses of
his lore, the logical severity of his diction, and his determination, at
times, to be desperately witty, produces a ludicrous effect, but
somewhat different from what he had intended. It is "Laughter" lame, and
only able to hold one of his sides, so that you laugh at, as well as
with him. But few, we think, would have been hypercritical in judging of
Columbus' first attitudes as he stepped down upon his new world. And
thus, let a great intellectual explorer be permitted to occupy his own
region, in whatever way, and with whatever ceremonies, may seem best to
himself. Should he even, like Cæsar, stumble upon the shore, no matter
if he stumble _forward_, and by accepting, make the omen change its
nature and meaning.
Genius and logical perception are De Quincey's principal powers. There
are some writers whose power, like the locusts in the Revelation, is "in
their tails"--they have stings, and there lies their scorpion power. De
Quincey's vigor is evenly and equally diffused through his whole being.
It is not a partial palpitation, but a deep, steady glow. His insight
hangs over us and the world like a nebulous star, seeing us, but, in
part, remaining unseen. In fact, his deepest thoughts have never been
disclosed. Like Burke, he has not "hung his heart upon his sleeve for
daws to peck at." He has profound _reticence_ as well as power, and he
has modesty as well as reticence. On subjects with which he is
acquainted, such as logic, literature, or political economy, no man can
speak with more positive and perfect assurance. But on all topics where
the conscience--the inner most moral nature--must be the umpire, "the
English Opium Eater" is silent. His "silence" indeed, "answers very
loud," his dumbness has a tongue, but it requires a "fine ear" to hear
its accents; and to interpret them what but his own exquisitely subtle
and musical style, like written sculpture, could suffice?
Indeed, De Quincey's style is one of the most wondrous of his gifts. As
Professor Wilson once said to us about him, "the _best_ word always
comes up." It comes up easily, as a bubble on the wave; and is yet
fixed, solid, and permanent as marble. It is at once warm as genius, and
cool as logic. Frost and fire fulfill the paradox of "embracing each
other." His faculties never disturb or distract each other's
movements--they are inseparable, as substance and shadow. Each thought
is twin-born with poetry. His sentences are generally very long, and as
full of life and of joints as a serpent. It is told of Coleridge, that
no shorthand-writer could do justice to his lectures; because, although
he spoke deliberately, yet it was impossible, from the first part of his
sentences, to have the slightest notion how they were to end--each
clause was a new surprise, and the close often unexpected as a
thunderbolt. In this, as in many other respects. De Quincey resembles
the "noticeable man with large gray eyes." Each of his periods, begin
where it may, accomplishes a cometary sweep ere it closes. To use an
expression of his own, applied to Bishop Berkeley, "he passes, with the
utmost ease and speed, from tar-water to the Trinity, from a mole-heap
to the thrones of the Godhead." His sentences are microcosms--real,
though imperfect wholes. It is as if he dreaded that earth would end,
and chaos come again, ere each prodigious period were done. This
practice, so far from being ashamed of, he often and elaborately
defends--contrasting it with the "short-winded and asthmatic" style of
writing which abounds in modern times, and particularly among French
authors. We humbly think that the truth on this question lies in the
middle. If an author is anxious for fullness, let him use long
sentences; if he aims at clearness, let them be short. If he is beating
about for truth, his sentences will be long; if he deems he has found,
and wishes to communicate it to others, they will be short. In long
sentences you see processes; in short, results. Eloquence delights in
long sentences, wit in short. Long sentences impress more at the time;
short sentences, if nervous, cling more to the memory. From long
sentences you must, in general, deduct a considerable quantum of
verbiage; short have often a meagre and skeleton air. The reading of
long sentences is more painful at first, less so afterward; a volume
composed entirely of short sentences becomes soon as wearisome as a
jest-book. The mind which employs long sentences has often a broad, but
dim vision--that which delights in short, sees a great number of small
points clearly, but seldom a rounded whole. De Quincey is a good
specimen of the first class. The late Dr. Hamilton, of Leeds, was the
most egregious instance of the second. With all his learning, and
talent, and fancy, the writings of that distinguished divine are
rendered exceedingly tedious by the broken and gasping character of
their style--reading which has been compared to walking on
stepping-stones instead of a firm road. Every thing is so clear, sharp,
and short, that you get irritated and provoked, and cry out for an
intricate or lengthy sentence, both as a trial to your wind, and as a
relief to your weariness.
The best style of writing, in point of effect, is that which combines
both forms of sentence in proper proportions. Just as a well-armed
warrior of old, while he held the broadsword in his right hand, had the
dagger of mercy suspended by his side, the effective writer, who can at
one time wave the flaming brand of eloquence, can at another use the
pointed poignard of direct statement, of close logic, or of keen and
caustic wit. Thus did Burke, Hall, Horsley, and Chalmers.
Akin to De Quincey's length of sentence, is his ungovernable habit of
digression. You can as soon calculate on the motions of a stream of the
aurora, as on those of his mind. From the title of any one of his
papers, you can never infer whether he is to treat the subject
announced, or a hundred others--whether the subjects he is to treat are
to be cognate, or contradictory, to the projected theme--whether, should
he begin the subject, he shall ever finish it--or into how many
foot-notes he is to draw away, as if into subterranean pipes, its pith
and substance. At every possible angle of his road he contrives to break
off, and hence he has never yet reached the end of a day's journey.
Unlike Christian in the "Pilgrim," _he_ welcomes every temptation to go
astray--and, not content with shaking hands with old Worldly Wiseman, he
must, before climbing Mount Difficulty, explore both the way of Danger
and that of Destruction. It may be inquired, if this arise from the
fertility or from the frailty of his genius--from his knowledge of, and
dominion over every province of thought, or from his natural or acquired
inability to resist "right-hand or left-hand defections," provided they
promise to interest himself and to amuse his readers. Judging from
Coleridge's similar practice, we are forced to conclude that it is in De
Quincey too--a weakness fostered, if not produced, by long habits of
self-indulgence.
And yet, notwithstanding such defects (and we might have added to them
his use of logical formulæ at times when they appear simply ridiculous,
his unnecessary scholasticism, and display of learning, the undue
self-complacence with which he parades his peculiar views, and explodes
his adversary's, however reputed and venerable, and a certain air of
exaggeration which swathes all his written speech), what splendid powers
this strange being, at all times and on all subjects, exerts! With what
razor-like sharpness does he cut the most difficult distinctions! What
learning is his--here compelling wonder, from its variety and minute
accuracy; and there, from the philosophical grasp with which he holds
it, in compressed masses! And, above all, what grand, sombre, Miltonic
gleams his imagination casts around him on his way; and in what deep
swells of organ-like music do his thoughts often, harmoniously and
irrepressibly, move! The three prose-writers of this century, who, as it
appears to us, approach most nearly to the giants of the era of Charles
I., in spirit of genius and munificence of language, are, Edward Irving,
in his preface to "Ben Ezra," Thomas Aird, in parts of his "Religious
Characteristics," and Thomas De Quincey, in his "Confessions," and his
"Suspiria de Profundis."
In coming down from an author to his works we have often a feeling of
humiliation and disappointment. It is like comparing the great Ben Nevis
with the streamlets which flow from his base, and asking, "Is this all
the mighty mountain can give the world?" So, "What has De Quincey done?"
is a question we are now sure to hear, and feel rather afraid to answer.
In a late number of that very excellent periodical, "Hogg's Instructor,"
Mr. De Quincey, as if anticipating some such objection, argues
(referring to Professor Wilson), that it is ridiculous to expect a
writer now to write a large separate work, as some had demanded from the
professor. He is here, however, guilty of a fallacy, which we wonder he
allowed to escape from his pen: there is a difference between a large
and a great work. No one wishes either De Quincey or John Wilson to
write a folio; what we wish from each of them is, an _artistic_ whole,
large or comparatively small, fully reflecting the image of his mind,
and bearing the relation to his other works which the "Paradise Lost"
does to Milton's "Lycidas," "Arcades," and "Hymn on the Nativity." And
this, precisely, is what neither of those illustrious men has as yet
effected.
De Quincey's works, if collected, would certainly possess sufficient
bulk; they lie scattered, in prodigal profusion, through the thousand
and one volumes of our periodical literature; and we are certain, that a
selection of their better portions would fill ten admirable octavos. Mr.
De Quincey himself was lately urged to collect them. His reply was,
"Sir, the thing is absolutely, insuperably, and forever impossible. Not
the archangel Gabriel, nor his multipotent adversary, durst attempt any
such thing!" We suspect, at least, that death must seal the lips of the
"old man eloquent," ere such a selection shall be made. And yet, in
those unsounded abysses, what treasures might be found--of criticism, of
logic, of wit, of metaphysical acumen, of research, of burning
eloquence, and essential poetry! We should meet there with admirable
specimens of translation from Jean Paul Richter and Lessing; with a
criticism on the former, quite equal to that more famous one of
Carlyle's; with historical chapters, such as those in "Blackwood" on the
Cæsars, worthy of Gibbon; with searching criticisms, such as one on the
knocking in Macbeth, and two series on Landor and Schlosser; with the
elephantine humor of his lectures on "Murder, considered as one of the
fine arts;" and with the deep theological insight of his papers on
Christianity, considered as a means of social progress, and on the
Essenes. In fact, De Quincey's knowledge of theology is equal to that of
two bishops--in metaphysics, he could puzzle any German professor--in
astronomy, he has outshone Professor Nichol--in chemistry, he can
outdive Samuel Brown--and in Greek, excite to jealousy the shades of
Porson and Parr. There is another department in which he stands first,
second, and third--we mean, the serious hoax. Do our readers remember
the German romance of Walladmor, passed off at the Leipsic fair as one
of Sir Walter Scott's, and afterward translated into English? The
translation, which was, in fact, a new work, was executed by De Quincey,
who, finding the original dull, thought proper to re-write it; and thus,
to charge trick upon trick. Or have they ever read his chapter in
"Blackwood" for July, 1837, on the "Retreat of a Tartar tribe?" a
chapter certainly containing the most powerful historical painting we
ever read, and recording a section of adventurous and romantic story not
equaled, he says, "since the retreat of the fallen angels." This
chapter, we have good reason for knowing, originated principally in his
own inventive brain. Add to all this, the fiery eloquence of his
"Confessions"--the labored speculation of his "Political Economy"--the
curiously-perverted ingenuity of his "Klosterheim"--and the solemn,
sustained, linked, and lyrical raptures of his "Suspiria," and we have
answered the question, What has he done? But another question is less
easy to answer, What can he, or should he, or shall he yet do? And here
we venture to express a long-cherished opinion. Pure history, or that
species of biography which merges into history, is his forte, and ought
to have been his selected province. He never could have written a
first-rate fiction or poem, or elaborated a complete or original system
of philosophy, although both his imagination and his intellect are of a
very high order. But he has every quality of the great historian, except
compression; he has learning, insight, the power of reproducing the
past, fancy to color, and wit to enliven his writing, and a style which,
while it is unwieldy upon small subjects, rises to meet all great
occasions, like a senator to salute a king. The only danger is, that if
he were writing the history of the Crusades or Cæsars, for instance, his
work would expand to the dimensions of the "Universal History."
A great history we do not now expect from De Quincey; but he might,
produce some, as yet, unwritten life, such as the life of Dante, or of
Milton. Such a work would at once concentrate his purpose, task his
powers, and perpetuate his name.
As it is, his place in the future gallery of ages is somewhat uncertain.
For all he has hitherto done, or for all the impression he has made upon
the world, his course may be marked as that of a brilliant but timid
meteor, shooting athwart the midnight, watched but by few eyes, but
accompanied by the keenest interest and admiration of those who did
watch it. Passages of his writings may be preserved in collections; and,
among natural curiosities in the museum of man, his memory must
assuredly be included as the greatest consumer of laudanum and
learning--as possessing the most potent of brains, and the weakest of
wills, of almost all men who ever lived.
We have other two remarks to offer ere we close. Our first is, that,
with all his errors, De Quincey has never ceased to believe in
Christianity. In an age when most men of letters have gone over to the
skeptical side, and too often treat with insolent scorn, as sciolistic
and shallow, those who still cling to the gospel, it is refreshing to
find one who stands confessedly at the head of them all, in point of
talent and learning, so intimately acquainted with the tenets, so
profoundly impressed by the evidences, and so ready to do battle for the
cause, of the blessed faith of Jesus. From those awful depths of sorrow
in which he was long plunged, he never ceased to look up to the
countenance and the cross of the Saviour; and now, recovered from his
evils, and sins, and degradations, we seem to see him sitting, "clothed
and in his right mind, at the feet of Jesus." Would to God that others
of his class were to go, and to sit down beside him!
We may state, in fine, that efforts are at present being made to
procure for Mr. De Quincey a pension. A memorial on the subject has been
presented to Lord John Russell. We need hardly say, that we cordially
wish this effort all success. A pension would be to him a delicate
sunset ray--soon, possibly, to shine on his bed of death--but, at all
events, sure to minister a joy and a feeling of security, which, during
all his long life, he has never for an hour experienced. It were but a
proper reward for his eminent abilities, hard toils, and the uniform
support which he has given, by his talents, to a healthy literature, and
a spiritual faith. We trust, too, that government may be induced to
couple with his name, in the same generous bestowal, another--inferior,
indeed, in brilliance, but which represents a more consistent and a more
useful life. We allude to Dr. Dick, of Broughty Ferry, a gentleman who
has done more than any living author to popularize science--to
accomplish the Socratic design of bringing down philosophy to earth--who
has never ceased, at the same time, to exhale moral and religious
feeling, as a fine incense, from the researches and experiments of
science to the Eternal Throne--and who, for his laborious exertions, of
nearly thirty years' duration, has been rewarded by poverty, and
neglect, the "proud man's contumely," and, as yet, by the silence of a
government which professes to be the patron of literature and the
succorer of every species of merit in distress. To quote a
newspaper-writer, who is well acquainted with the case: "I know that Dr.
Dick has lived a long and a laborious life, writing books which have
done much good to man. I know that he has often had occasion to sell
these books to publishers, at prices to which his poverty, and not his
will consented. I know, too, that throughout his life he has lived with
the moderation and the meekness of a saint, as he has written with the
wisdom of a sage; and, knowing these things, I would fain save him from
the death of a martyr."
[From Household Words.]
THE MINER'S DAUGHTERS--A TALE OF THE PEAK.
IN THREE CHAPTERS.
CHAPTER I--THE CHILD'S TRAGEDY.
There is no really beautiful part of this kingdom so little known as the
Peak of Derbyshire. Matlock, with its tea-garden trumpery and
mock-heroic wonders; Buxton, with its bleak hills and fashionable
bathers; the truly noble Chatsworth and the venerable Haddon, engross
almost all that the public generally have seen of the Peak. It is talked
of as a land of mountains, which in reality are only hills; but its true
beauty lies in valleys that have been created by the rending of the
earth in some primeval convulsion, and which present a thousand charms
to the eyes of the lover of nature. How deliciously do the crystal
waters of the Wye and the Dove rush along such valleys, or dales, as
they there are called. With what a wild variety do the gray rocks soar
up amid their woods and copses. How airily stand in the clear heavens
the lofty limestone precipices, and the gray edges of rock gleam cut
from the bare green downs--there _never_ called downs. What a genuine
Saxon air is there cast over the population--what a Saxon bluntness
salutes you in their speech!
It is into the heart of this region that we propose now to carry the
reader. Let him suppose himself with us now on the road from
Ashford-in-the-water to Tideswell. We are at the Bull's Head, a little
inn on that road. There is nothing to create wonder, or a suspicion of a
hidden Arcadia in any thing you see, but another step forward,
and--there! There sinks a world of valleys at your feet. To your left
lies the delicious Monsal Dale. Old Finn Hill lifts his gray head
grandly over it. Hobthrush's Castle stands bravely forth in the hollow
of his side--gray, and desolate, and mysterious. The sweet Wye goes
winding and sounding at his feet, amid its narrow green meadows, green
as the emerald, and its dark glossy alders. Before us stretches on,
equally beautiful, Cressbrook Dale; Little Edale shows its cottages from
amidst its trees; and as we advance, the Mousselin-de-laine Mills
stretch across the mouth of Miller's Dale, and startle with the aspect
of so much life amid so much solitude.
But our way is still onward. We resist the attraction of Cressbrook
village on its lofty eminence, and plunge to the right, into Wardlow
Dale. Here we are buried deep in woods, and yet behold still deeper the
valley descend below us. There is an Alpine feeling upon us. We are
carried once more, as in a dream, into the Saxon Switzerland. Above us
stretch the boldest ranges of lofty precipices, and deep amid the woods
are heard the voices of children. These come from a few workmen's
houses, couched at the foot of a cliff that rises high and bright amid
the sun. That is Wardlow Cop; and there we mean to halt for a moment.
Forward lies a wild region of hills, and valleys, and lead-mines, but
forward goes no road, except such as you can make yourself through the
tangled woods.
At the foot of Wardlow Cop, before this little hamlet of Bellamy Wick
was built, or the glen was dignified with the name of Raven Dale, there
lived a miner who had no term for his place of abode. He lived, he said,
under Wardlow Cop, and that contented him.
His house was one of those little, solid, gray limestone cottages, with
gray flagstone roofs, which abound in the Peak. It had stood under that
lofty precipice when the woods which now so densely fill the valley were
but newly planted. There had been a mine near it, which had no doubt
been the occasion of its erection in so solitary a place; but that mine
was now worked out and David Dunster, the miner, now worked at a mine
right over the hills in Miller's Dale. He was seldom at home, except at
night, and on Sundays. His wife, besides keeping her little house, and
digging and weeding in the strip of garden that lay on the steep slope
above the house, hemmed in with a stone wall, also seamed stockings for
a framework-knitter in Ashford, whither she went once or twice in the
week.
They had three children, a boy and two girls. The boy was about eight
years of age; the girls were about five and six. These children were
taught their lessons of spelling and reading by the mother, among her
other multifarious tasks; for she was one of those who are called
regular plodders. She was quiet, patient, and always doing, though never
in a bustle. She was not one of those who acquire a character for vast
industry by doing every thing in a mighty flurry, though they contrive
to find time for a tolerable deal of gossip under the plea of resting a
bit, and which "resting a bit" they always terminate by an exclamation
that "they must be off, though, for they have a world of work to do."
Betty Dunster, on the contrary, was looked on as rather "a slow coach."
If you remarked that she was a hard-working woman, the reply was, "Well,
she's always doing--Betty's work's never done; but then she does na
hurry hersen." The fact was, Betty was a thin, spare woman, of no very
strong constitution, but of an untiring spirit. Her pleasure and rest
were, when David came home at night, to have his supper ready, and to
sit down opposite to him at the little round table, and help him, giving
a bit now and then to the children, that came and stood round, though
they had had their suppers, and were ready for bed as soon as they had
seen something of their "dad."
David Dunster was one of those remarkably tall fellows that you see
about these hills, who seem of all things the very worst made men to
creep into the little mole holes on the hill sides that they call
lead-mines. But David did manage to burrow under and through the hard
limestone rooks as well as any of them. He was a hard-working man,
though he liked a sup of beer, as most Derbyshire men do, and sometimes
came home none of the soberest. He was naturally of a very hasty temper,
and would fly into great rages; and if he were put out by any thing in
the working of the mines, or the conduct of his fellow-workmen, he would
stay away from home for days, drinking at Tideswell, or the Bull's Head,
at the top of Monsal Dale, or down at the Miners' Arms at
Ashford-in-the-water.
Betty Dunster bore all this patiently. She looked on these things
somewhat as matters of course. At that time, and even now, how few
miners do not drink and "rol a bit," as they call it. She was,
therefore, tolerant, and let the storms blow over, ready always to
persuade her husband to go home and sleep off his drink and anger, but
if he were too violent, leaving him till another attempt might succeed
better. She was very fond of her children, and not only taught them on
week-days their lessons, and to help her to seam, but also took them to
the Methodist Chapel in "Tidser," as they called Tideswell, whither,
whenever she could, she enticed David. David, too, in his way, was fond
of the children, especially of the boy, who was called David after him.
He was quite wrapped up in the lad, to use the phrase of the people in
that part; in fact, he was foolishly and mischievously fond of him. He
would give him beer to drink, "to make a true Briton on him," as he
said, spite of Betty's earnest endeavor to prevent it--telling him that
he was laying the foundation in the lad of the same faults that he had
himself. But David Dunster did not look on drinking as a fault at all.
It was what he had been used to all his life. It was what all the miners
had been used to for generations. A man was looked on as a milk-sop and
a Molly Coddle, that would not take his mug of ale, and be merry with
his comrades. It required the light of education, and the efforts that
have been made by the Temperance Societies, to break in on this ancient
custom of drinking, which, no doubt, has flourished in these hills since
the Danes and other Scandinavians bored and perforated them of old for
the ores of lead and copper. To Betty Dunster's remonstrances, and
commendations of tea, David would reply, "Botheration, Betty, wench!
Dunna tell me about thy tea and such-like pig's-wesh. It's all very well
for women; but a man, Betty, a man mun ha' a sup of real stingo, lass.
He mun ha' summut to prop his ribs out, lass, as he delves through th'
chert and tood-stone. When tha weylds th' maundrel (the pick), and I
wesh th' dishes, tha shall ha' th' drink, my wench, and I'll ha' th'
tea. Till then, prithee let me aloon, and dunna bother me, for it's no
use. It only kicks my monkey up."
And Betty found that it was of no use; that it did only kick his monkey
up, and so she let him alone, except when she could drop in a persuasive
word or two. The mill-owners at Cress brook and Miller's Dale had
forbidden any public-house nearer than Edale, and they had more than
once called the people together to point out to them the mischiefs of
drinking, and the advantages to be derived from the very savings of
temperance. But all these measures, though they had some effect on the
mill people, had very little on the miners. They either sent to
Tideswell or Edale for kegs of beer to peddle at the mines, or they went
thither themselves on receiving their wages.
And let no one suppose that David Dunster was worse than his fellows, or
that Betty Dunster thought her case a particularly hard one. David was
"pretty much of a muchness," according to the country phrase, with the
rest of his hard-working tribe, which was, and always had been, a
hard-drinking tribe; and Betty, though she wished it different, did not
complain just because it was of no use, and because she was no worse off
than her neighbors.
Often when she went to "carry in her hose" to Ashford, she left the
children at home by themselves. She had no alternative. They were there
in that solitary valley for many hours playing alone. And to them it was
not solitary. It was all that they knew of life, and that all was very
pleasant to them. In spring, they hunted for birds'-nests in the copses,
and among the rocks and gray stones that had fallen from them. In the
copses built the blackbirds and thrushes; in the rocks the firetails;
and the gray wagtails in the stones, which were so exactly of their own
color, as to make it difficult to see them. In summer, they gathered
flowers and berries, and in the winter they played at horses, kings, and
shops, and sundry other things in the house.
On one of these occasions, a bright afternoon in autumn, the three
children had rambled down the glen, and found a world of amusement in
being teams of horses, in making a little mine at the foot of a tall
cliff; and in marching for soldiers, for they had one day--the only time
in their lives--seen some soldiers go through the village of Ashford,
when they had gone there with their mother, for she now and then took
them with her when she had something from the shop to carry besides her
bundle of hose. At length they came to the foot of an open hill, which
swelled to a considerable height, with a round and climbable side, on
which grew a wilderness of bushes, amid which lay scattered masses of
gray crag. A small winding path went up this, and they followed it. It
was not long, however, before they saw some things which excited their
eager attention. Little David, who was the guide, and assumed to himself
much importance as the protector of his sisters, exclaimed, "See here!"
and springing forward, plucked a fine crimson cluster of the mountain
bramble. His sisters, on seeing this, rushed on with like eagerness.
They soon forsook the little winding and craggy footpath, and hurried
through sinking masses of moss and dry grass, from bush to bush, and
place to place. They were soon far up above the valley, and almost every
step revealed to them some delightful prize. The clusters of the
mountain-bramble, resembling mulberries, and known only to the
inhabitants of the hills, were abundant, and were rapidly devoured. The
dewberry was as eagerly gathered--its large, purple fruit passing with
them for blackberries. In their hands were soon seen posies of the
lovely grass of Parnassus, the mountain cistus, and the bright blue
geranium.
Higher and higher the little group ascended in this quest, till the
sight of the wide, naked hills, and the hawks circling round the lofty,
tower-like crags over their heads, made them feel serious and somewhat
afraid.
"Where are we?" asked Jane, the elder sister. "Arn't we a long way from
hom?"
"Let us go hom," said little Nancy. "I'm afreed here;" clutching hold of
Jane's frock.
"Pho, nonsense!" said David; "what are you afreed on? I'll tak care on
you, niver fear."
And with this he assumed a bold and defying aspect, and said, "Come
along; there are nests in th' hazzles up yonder."
He began to mount again, but the two girls hung back and said, "Nay,
David, dunna go higher; we are both afreed;" and Jane added, "It's a
long wee from hom, I'm sure."
"And those birds screechin' so up there; I darna go up," added little
Nancy. They were the hawks that she meant, which hovered whimpering and
screaming about the highest cliffs. David called them little cowards,
but began to descend, and, presently, seeking for berries and flowers as
they descended, they regained the little winding, craggy road, and,
while they were calling to each other, discovered a remarkable echo on
the opposite hill side. On this, they shouted to it, and laughed, and
were half frightened when it laughed and shouted again. Little Nancy
said it must be an old man in the inside of the mountain; at which they
were all really afraid, though David put on a big look, and said,
"Nonsense! it was nothing at all." But Jane asked how nothing at all
could shout and laugh as it did? and on this little Nancy plucked her
again by the frock, and said in turn, "Oh, dear, let's go hom!"
But at this David gave a wild whoop to frighten them, and when the hill
whooped again, and the sisters began to run, he burst into laughter, and
the strange spectral Ha! ha! ha! that ran along the inside of the hill,
as it were, completed their fear, and they stopped their ears with their
hands, and scuttled away down the hill. But now David seized them, and
pulling their hands down from their heads, he said, "See here! what a
nice place with the stones sticking out like seats. Why, it's like a
little house; let us stay and play a bit here." It was a little hollow
in the hill side surrounded by projecting stones like an amphitheatre.
The sisters were still afraid, but the sight of this little hollow with
its seats of crag had such a charm for them that they promised David
they would stop awhile, if he would promise not to shout and awake the
echo. David readily promised this, and so they sat down. David proposed
to keep a school, and cut a hazel wand from a bush, and began to lord it
over his two scholars in a very pompous manner. The two sisters
pretended to be much afraid, and to read very diligently on pieces of
flat stone which they had picked up. And then David became a sergeant,
and was drilling them for soldiers, and stuck pieces of fern into their
hair for cockades. And then, soon after, they were sheep, and he was the
shepherd; and he was catching his flock and going to shear them, and
made so much noise that Jane cried, "Hold! there's the echo mocking us."
At this they all were still. But David said, "Pho! never mind the echo;
I must shear my sheep:" but just as he was seizing little Nancy to
pretend to shear her with a piece of stick, Jane cried out, "Look! look!
how black it is coming down the valley there! There's going to be a
dreadful starm. Let us hurry hom!"
David and Nancy both looked up, and agreed to run as fast down the hill
as they could. But the next moment the driving storm swept over the
hill, and the whole valley was hid in it. The three children still
hurried on, but it became quite dark, and they soon lost the track, and
were tossed about by the wind, so that they had difficulty to keep on
their legs. Little Nancy began to cry, and the three taking hold of each
other, endeavored in silence to make their way homeward. But presently
they all stumbled over a large stone, and fell some distance down the
hill. They were not hurt, but much frightened, for they now remembered
the precipices, and were afraid every minute of going over them. They
now strove to find the track by going up again, but they could not find
it any where. Sometimes they went upward till they thought they were
quite too far, and then they went downward till they were completely
bewildered; and then, like the Babes in the Wood, "They sate them down
and cried."
But ere they had sate long, they heard footsteps, and listened. They
certainly heard them and shouted, but there was no answer. David
shouted, "Help! fayther! mother! help!" but there was no answer. The
wind swept fiercely by; the hawks whimpered from the high crags, lost in
the darkness of the storm; and the rain fell, driving along icy cold.
Presently there was a gleam of light through the clouds; the hill side
became visible, and through the haze they saw a tall figure as of an old
man ascending the hill. He appeared to carry two loads slung from his
shoulders by a strap; a box hanging before, and a bag hanging at his
back. He wound up the hill slowly and wearily, and presently he stopped,
and relieving himself of his load, seated himself on a piece of crag to
rest. Again David shouted, but there still was no answer. The old man
sate as if no shout had been heard--immovable.
"It _is_ a man," said David, "and I _will_ mak him hear;" and with that
he shouted once more with all his might. But the old man made no sign of
recognition. He did not even turn his head, but he took off his hat and
began to wipe his brow as if warm with the ascent.
"What can it be?" said David in astonishment. "It _is_ a man, that's
sartain. I'll run and see."
"Nay, nay!" shrieked the sisters. "Don't, David, don't! It's perhaps the
old man out of the mountain that's been mocking us. Perhaps," added
Jane, "he only comes out in starms and darkness."
"Stuff!" said David, "an echo isn't a man; it's only our own voices.
I'll see who it is;" and away he darted, spite of the poor girls' crying
in terror, "Don't; don't, David; oh, don't!"
But David was gone. He was not long in reaching the old man, who sate on
his stone breathing hard, as if out of breath with his ascent, but not
appearing to perceive David's approach. The rain and the wind drove
fiercely upon him, but he did not seem to mind it. David was half afraid
to approach close to him, but he called out, "Help! help, mester!" The
old man remained as unconscious of his presence. "Hillo!" cried David
again. "Can you tell us the way down, mester?" There was no answer, and
David was beginning to feel a shudder of terror run through every limb,
when the clouds cleared considerably, and he suddenly exclaimed, "Why,
it's old Tobias Turton of top of Edale, and he's as deaf as a door
nail!"
In an instant David was at his side; seized his coat to make him aware
of his presence, and, on the old man perceiving him, shouted in his ear,
"Which is the way down here, Mester Turton? Where's the track?"
"Down? Weighs o' the back?" said the old man; "ay, my lad, I was fain to
sit down; it does weigh o' th' back, sure enough."
"Where's the foot-track?" shouted David, again.
"Th' foot-track? Why, what art ta doing here, my lad, in such a starm?
Isn't it David Dunster's lad?"
David nodded. "Why, the track's here--see!" and the old man stamped his
foot. "Get down hom, my lad, as fast as thou can. What dun they do
letting thee be upon th' hills in such a dee as this?"
David nodded his thanks, and turned to descend the track, while the old
man, adjusting his burden again, silently and wearily recommenced his
way upward.
David shouted to his sisters as he descended, and they quickly replied.
He called to them to come toward him, as he was on the track, and was
afraid to quit it again. They endeavored to do this; but the darkness
was now redoubled, and the wind and rain became more furious than ever.
The two sisters were soon bewildered among the bushes; and David, who
kept calling to them at intervals to direct their course toward him,
soon heard them crying bitterly. At this, he forgot the necessity of
keeping the track, and darting toward them, soon found them, by
continuing to call to them, and took their hands to lead them to the
track. But they were now drenched through with the rain, and shivered
with cold and fear. David, with a stout heart, endeavored to cheer them.
He told them the track was close by, and that they would soon be at
home. But though the track was not ten yards off, somehow they did not
find it. Bushes and projecting rocks turned them out of their course;
and, owing to the confusion caused by the wind, the darkness, and their
terror, they searched in vain for the track. Sometimes they thought they
had found it, and went on a few paces, only to stumble over loose
stones, or get entangled in the bushes.
It was now absolutely becoming night. Their terrors increased greatly.
They shouted and cried aloud, in the hope of making their parents hear
them. They felt sure that both father and mother must be come home; and
as sure that they would be hunting for them. But they did not reflect
that their parents could not tell in what direction they had gone. Both
father and mother were come home, and the mother had instantly rushed
out to try to find them, on perceiving that they were not in the house.
She had hurried to and fro, and called--not at first supposing they
would be far. But when she heard nothing of them, she ran in, and begged
of her husband to join in the search. But at first David Dunster would
do nothing. He was angry at them for going away from the house, and
said he was too tired to go on a wild-goose chase through the
plantations after them. "They are i' th' plantations," said he; "they
are sheltering there somewhere. Let them alone, and they'l come home,
with a good long tail behind them."
With this piece of a child's song of sheep, David sat down to his
supper, and Betty Dunster hurried up the valley, shouting, "Children,
where are you? David! Jane! Nancy! where are you?"
When she heard nothing of them, she hurried still more wildly up the
hill toward the village. When she arrived there--the distance of a mile
--she inquired from house to house, but no one had seen any thing of
them. It was clear they had not been in that direction. An alarm was
thus created in the village; and several young men set out to join Mrs.
Dunster in the quest. They again descended the valley toward Dunster's
house, shouting every now and then, and listening. The night was pitch
dark, and the rain fell heavily; but the wind had considerably abated,
and once they thought they heard a faint cry in answer to their call,
far down the valley. They were right: the children had heard the
shouting, and had replied to it. But they were far off. The young men
shouted again, but there was no answer; and after shouting once more
without success, they hastened on. When they reached David Dunster's
house, they found the door open, and no one within. They knew that David
had set off in quest of the children himself, and they determined to
descend the valley. The distracted mother went with them, crying
silently to herself, and praying inwardly, and every now and then trying
to shout. But the young men raised their strong voices above hers, and
made the cliffs echo with their appeals.
Anon a voice answered them down the valley. They ran on as well as the
darkness would let them, and soon found that it was David Dunster, who
had been in the plantations on the other side of the valley; but hearing
nothing of the lost children, now joined them. He said he had heard the
cry from the hill side farther down, that answered to their shouts; and
he was sure that it was his boy David's voice. But he had shouted again,
and there had been no answer but a wild scream as of terror, that made
his blood run cold.
"O God!" exclaimed the distracted mother, "what can it be! David!
David! Jane Nancy!"
There was no answer. The young men bade Betty Dunster to contain
herself, and they would find the children before they went home again.
All held on down the valley, and in the direction whence the voice came.
Many times did the young men and the now strongly agitated father shout
and listen. At length they seemed to hear voices of weeping and moaning.
They listened--they were sure they heard a lamenting--it could only be
the children. But why then did they not answer? On struggled the men,
and Mrs. Dunster followed wildly after. Now, again, they stood and
shouted, and a kind of terrified scream followed the shout.
"God in heaven!" exclaimed the mother; "what is it? There is something
dreadful. My children! my children! where are you?"
"Be silent, pray do, Mrs. Dunster," said one of the young men, "or we
can not catch the sounds so as to follow them." They again listened, and
the wailings of the children were plainly heard. The whole party pushed
forward over stock and stone up the hill. They called again, and there
was a cry of "Here! here! fayther! mother! where are you?"
In a few moments more the whole party had reached the children, who
stood drenched with rain, and trembling violently, under a cliff that
gave no shelter, but was exposed especially to the wind and rain.
"O Christ! my children!" cried the mother, wildly, struggling forward
and clasping one in her arms. "Nancy! Jane! But where is David? David!
David! Oh, where is David? Where is your brother?"
The whole party was startled at not seeing the boy, and joined in a
simultaneous "Where is he? where is your brother?"
The two children only wept and trembled more violently, and burst into
loud crying.
"Silence!" shouted the father. "Where is David? I tell ye? Is he lost?
David, lad, where ar ta?"
All listened, but there was no answer but the renewed crying of the two
girls.
"Where is the lad, then?" thundered forth the father with a terrible
oath.
The two terrified children cried, "Oh, down there! down there!"
"Down where? Oh, God!" exclaimed one of the young men; "why it's a
precipice! Down there!"
At this dreadful intelligence the mother gave a wild shriek, and fell
senseless on the ground. The young men caught her, and dragged her back
from the edge of the precipice. The father in the same moment, furious
at what he heard, seized the younger child, that happened to be near
him, and shaking it violently, swore he would fling it down after the
lad.
He was angry with the poor children, as if they had caused the
destruction of his boy. The young men seized him, and bade him think
what he was about; but the man believing his boy had fallen down the
precipice, was like a madman. He kicked at his wife as she lay on the
ground, as if she were guilty of this calamity by leaving the children
at home. He was furious against the poor girls, as if they had led their
brother into danger. In his violent rage he was a perfect maniac, and
the young men pushing him away, cried shame on him. In a while, the
desperate man, torn by a hurricane of passion, sate himself down on a
crag, and burst into a tempest of tears, and struck his head violently
with his clenched fists, and cursed himself and every body. It was a
dreadful scene.
Meantime, some of the young men had gone down below the precipice on
which the children had stood, and, feeling among the loose stones, had
found the body of poor little David. He was truly dead!
When he had heard the shout of his father, or of the young men, he had
given one loud shout in answer, and saying, "Come on! never fear now!"
sprang forward, and was over the precipice in the dark, and flew down,
and was dashed to pieces. His sisters heard a rush, a faint shriek, and
suddenly stopping, escaped the destruction that poor David had found.
CHAPTER II.--MILL LIFE.
We must pass over the painful and dreadful particulars of that night,
and of a long time to come; the maniacal rage of the father, the
shattered heart and feelings of the mother, the dreadful state of the
two remaining children, to whom their brother was one of the most
precious objects in a world which, like theirs, contained so few. One
moment to have seen him full of life, and fun, and bravado, and almost
the next a lifeless and battered corpse, was something too strange and
terrible to be soon surmounted. But this was woefully aggravated by the
cruel anger of their father, who continued to regard them as guilty of
the death of his favorite boy. He seemed to take no pleasure in them. He
never spoke to them but to scold them. He drank more deeply than ever,
and came home later; and when there, was sullen and morose. When their
mother, who suffered severely, but still plodded on with all her duties,
said, "David, they are thy children too," he would reply, savagely, "Hod
thy tongue! What's a pack o' wenches to my lad?"
What tended to render the miner more hard toward the two girls was a
circumstance which would have awakened a better feeling in a softer
father's heart. Nancy, the younger girl, since the dreadful catastrophe,
had seemed to grow gradually dull and defective in her intellect, she
had a slow and somewhat idiotic air and manner. Her mother perceived it,
and was struck with consternation by it. She tried to rouse her, but in
vain. She could not perform her ordinary reading and spelling lessons.
She seemed to have forgotten what was already learned. She appeared to
have a difficulty in moving her legs, and carried her hands as if she
had suffered a partial paralysis. Jane, her sister, was dreadfully
distressed at it, and she and her mother wept many bitter tears over
her. One day, in the following spring, they took her with them to
Ashford, and consulted the doctor there. On examining her, and hearing
fully what had taken place at the time of the brother's death--the fact
of which he well knew, for it, of course, was known to the whole country
round--he shook his head, and said he was afraid they must make up their
minds to a sad case; that the terrors of that night had affected her
brain, and that, through it, the whole nervous system had suffered, and
was continuing to suffer the most melancholy effects. The only thing, he
thought, in her favor was her youth; and added, that it might have a
good effect, if they could leave the place where she had undergone such
a terrible shock. But whether they did or not, kindness and soothing
attentions to her would do more than any thing else.
Mrs. Dunster and little Jane returned home with heavy hearts. The
doctor's opinion had only confirmed their fears; for Jane, though but a
child, had quickness and affection for her sister enough to make her
comprehend the awful nature of poor Nancy's condition. Mrs. Dunster told
her husband the doctor's words, for she thought they would awaken some
tenderness in him toward the unfortunate child. But he said, "That's
just what I expected. Hou'll grow soft, and then who's to maintain her?
Hou mun goo to th' workhouse."
With that he took his maundrel and went off to his work. Instead of
softening his nature, this intelligence seemed only to harden and
brutalize it. He drank now more and more. But all that summer the mother
and Jane did all that they could think of to restore the health and mind
of poor Nancy. Every morning, when the father was gone to work, Jane
went to a spring up in the opposite wood, famed for the coldness and
sweetness of its waters. On this account the proprietors of the mills at
Cressbrook had put down a large trough there under the spreading trees,
and the people fetched the water even from the village. Hence Jane
brought, at many journeys, this cold, delicious water to bathe her
sister in; they then rubbed her warm with cloths, and gave her new milk
for her breakfast. Her lessons were not left off, lest the mind should
sink into fatuity, but were made as easy as possible. Jane continued to
talk to her, and laugh with her, as if nothing was amiss, though she did
it with a heavy heart, and she engaged her to weed and hoe with her in
their little garden. She did not dare to lead her far out into the
valley, lest it might excite her memory of the past fearful time, but
she gathered her flowers, and continued to play with her at all their
accustomed sports, of building houses with pieces of pots and stones,
and imagining gardens and parks. The anxious mother, when some weeks
were gone by, fancied that there was really some improvement. The
cold-bathing seemed to have strengthened the system: the poor child
walked, and bore herself with more freedom and firmness. She became
ardently fond of being with her sister, and attentive to her directions.
But there was a dull cloud over her intellect, and a vacancy in her eyes
and features. She was quiet, easily pleased, but seemed to have little
volition of her own. Mrs. Dunster thought if they could but get her away
from that spot, it might rouse her mind from its sleep. But, perhaps,
the sleep was better than the awaking might be; however, the removal
came, though in a more awful way than was looked for. The miner, who had
continued to drink more and more, and seemed to have almost estranged
himself from his home, staying away in his drinking bouts for a week or
more together, was one day blasting a rock in the mine, and being
half-stupefied with beer, did not take care to get out of the way of the
explosion, was struck with a piece of the flying stone, and killed on
the spot.
The poor widow and her children were now obliged to remove from under
Wardlow-Cop. The place had been a sad one to her; the death of her
husband, though he had been latterly far from a good one, and had left
her with the children in deep poverty, was a fresh source of severe
grief to her. Her religious mind was struck down with a weight of
melancholy by the reflection of the life he had led, and the sudden way
in which he had been summoned into eternity. When she looked forward,
what a prospect was there for her children! It was impossible for her to
maintain them from her small earnings, and as to Nancy, would she ever
be able to earn her own bread, and protect herself in the world?
It was amid such reflections that Mrs. Dunster quitted this deep,
solitary, and, to her, fatal valley, and took up her abode in the
village of Cressbrook. Here she had one small room, and by her own
labors, and some aid from the parish, she managed to support herself and
the children. For seven years she continued her laborious life, assisted
by the labor of the two daughters, who also seamed stockings, and in the
evenings were instructed by her. Her girls were now thirteen and fifteen
years of age: Jane was a tall and very pretty girl of her years; she was
active, industrious, and sweet-tempered: her constant affection for poor
Nancy was something as admirable as it was singular. Nancy had now
confirmed good health, but it had affected her mother to perceive that,
since the catastrophe of her brother's death, and the cruel treatment of
her father at that time, she had never grown in any degree as she ought;
she was short, stout, and of a pale and very plain countenance. It could
not be now said that she was deficient in mind, but she was slow in its
operations. She displayed, indeed, a more than ordinary depth of
reflection, and a shrewdness of observation, but the evidences of-this
came forth in a very quiet way, and were observable only to her mother
and sister. To all besides she was extremely reserved: she was timid to
excess, and shrunk from public notice into the society of her mother and
sister. There was a feeling abroad in the neighborhood that she was "not
quite right," but the few who were more discerning, shook their heads,
and observed, "Right, she was not, poor thing, but it was not want of
sense; she had more of that than most."
And such was the opinion of her mother and sister. They perceived that
Nancy had received a shock of which she must bear the effects through
life. Circumstances might bring her feeble but sensitive nerves much
misery. She required to be guarded and sheltered from the rudenesses of
the world, and the mother trembled to think how much she might be
exposed to them. But in every thing that related to sound judgment, they
knew that she surpassed not only them, but any of their acquaintance. If
any difficulty had to be decided, it was Nancy who pondered on it, and,
perhaps, at some moment when least expected, pronounced an opinion that
might be taken as confidently as an oracle.
The affection of the two sisters was something beyond the ties of this
world. Jane had watched and attended to her from the time of her
constitutional injury with a love that never seemed to know a moment's
weariness or change; and the affection which Nancy evinced for her was
equally intense and affecting. She seemed to hang on her society for her
very life. Jane felt this, and vowed that they would never quit one
another. The mother sighed. How many things, she thought, might tear
asunder that beautiful resolve.
But now they were of an age to obtain work in the mill. Indeed, Jane
could have had employment there long before, but she would not quit her
sister till she could go with her--and now there they went. The
proprietor, who knew the case familiarly, so ordered it that the two
sisters should work near each other; and that poor Nancy should be as
little exposed to the rudeness of the work-people as possible. But at
first so slow and awkward were Nancy's endeavors, and such an effect had
it on her frame, that it was feared she must give it up. This would have
been a terrible calamity; and the tears of the two sisters and the
benevolence of the employer enabled Nancy to pass through this severe
ordeal. In a while she acquired sufficient dexterity, and thenceforward
went through her work with great accuracy and perseverance. As far as
any intercourse with the workpeople was concerned, she might be said to
be dumb. Scarcely ever did she exchange a word with any one, but she
returned kind nods and smiles; and every morning and evening, and at
dinner-time, the two sisters might be seen going to and fro, side by
side--Jane often talking with some of them; the little, odd-looking
sister walking silent and listening.
Five more years, and Jane was a young woman. Amid her companions, who
were few of them above the middle size, she had a tall and striking
appearance. Her father had been a remarkably tall and strong man, and
she possessed something of his stature, though none of his irritable
disposition. She was extremely pretty, of a blooming, fresh complexion,
and graceful form. She was remarkable for the sweetness of her
expression, which was the index of her disposition. By her side still
went that odd, broad-built, but still pale and little sister. Jane was
extremely admired by the young men of the neighborhood, and had already
many offers, but she listened to none. "Where I go must Nancy go," she
said to herself, "and of whom can I be sure?"
Of Nancy no one took notice. Her pale, somewhat large features, her
thoughtful, silent look, and her short, stout figure, gave you an idea
of a dwarf, though she could not strictly be called one. No one would
think of Nancy as a wife--where Jane went she must go; the two clung
together with one heart and soul. The blow which deprived them of their
brother seemed to bind them inseparably together.
Mrs. Dunster, besides her seaming, at which, in truth, she earned a
miserable sum, had now for some years been the post-woman from the
village to the Bull's Head, where the mail, going on to Tideswell, left
the letter-bag. Thither and back, wet or dry, summer or winter, she went
every day, the year round. With her earnings, and those of the girls,
the world went as well with them as the world goes on the average with
the poor; and she kept a small, neat cottage. Cramps and rheumatisms she
began to feel sensibly from so much exposure to rain and cold; but the
never-varying and firm affection of her two children was a balm in her
cup which made her contented with every thing else.
When Jane was about two-and-twenty, poor Mrs. Dunster, seized with
rheumatic fever, died. On her death-bed, she said to Jane, "Thou will
never desert poor Nancy; and that's my comfort. God has been good to me.
After all my trouble, he has given me this faith, that, come weal, come
woe, so long as thou has a home, Nancy will never want one. God bless
thee for it! God bless you both; and he will bless you!" So saying,
Betty Dunster breathed her last.
The events immediately following her death did not seem to bear out her
dying faith; for the two poor girls were obliged to give up their
cottage. There was a want of cottages. Not half of the work-people could
be entertained in this village; they went to and fro for many miles.
Jane and Nancy were now obliged to do the same. Their cottage was wanted
for an overlooker--and they removed to Tideswell, three miles off. They
had thus six miles a day to walk, besides standing at their work; but
they were young, and had companions. In Tideswell they were more
cheerful. They had a snug little cottage; were near a meeting; and found
friends. They did not complain. Here, again Jane Dunster attracted great
attention, and a young, thriving grocer paid his addresses to her. It
was an offer that made Jane take time to reflect. Every one said it was
an opportunity not to be neglected: but Jane weighed in her mind, "Will
he keep faith in my compact with Nancy?" Though her admirer made every
vow on the subject, Jane paused and determined to take the opinion of
Nancy. Nancy thought for a day, and then said, "Dearest sister, I don't
feel easy; I fear that from some cause it would not do in the end."
Jane, from that moment, gave up the idea of the connection. There might
be those who would suspect Nancy of a selfish bias in the advice she
gave; but Jane knew that no such feeling influenced her pure soul. For
one long year the two sisters traversed the hills between Cressbrook and
Tideswell. But they had companions, and it was pleasant in the summer
months. But winter came, and then it was a severe trial. To rise in the
dark, and traverse those wild and bleak hills; to go through snow and
drizzle, and face the sharpest winds in winter, was no trifling matter.
Before winter was over, the two young women began seriously to revolve
the chances of a nearer residence, or a change of employ. There were not
few who blamed Jane excessively for the folly of refusing the last good
offer. There were even more than one who, in the hearing of Nancy,
blamed her. Nancy was thoughtful, agitated, and wept. "If I can, dear
sister," she said, "have advised you to your injury, how shall I forgive
myself? What _shall_ become of me?"
But Jane clasped her sister to her heart, and said, "No! no! dearest
sister, you are not to blame. I feel you are right; let us wait, and we
shall see!"
CHAPTER III.--THE COURTSHIP AND ANOTHER SHIP.
One evening, as the two sisters were hastening along the road through
the woods on their way homeward, a young farmer drove up in his
spring-cart, cast a look at them, stopped, and said, "Young women, if
you are going my way. I shall be glad of your company. You are quite
welcome to ride."
The sisters looked at each other. "Dunna be afreed," said the young
farmer; "my name's James Cheshire. I'm well known in these parts; you
may trust yersens wi' me, if it's agreeable."
To Jane's surprise, Nancy said, "No, sir, we are not afraid; we are much
obliged to you."
The young farmer helped them up into the cart, and away they drove.
"I'm afraid we shall crowd you," said Jane.
"Not a bit of it," replied the young farmer. "There's room for three
bigger nor us on this seat, and I'm no ways tedious."
The sisters saw nothing odd in his use of the word "tedious," as
strangers would have done they knew it merely meant "not at all
particular." They were soon in active talk. As he had told them who he
was, he asked them in their turn if they worked at the mills there. They
replied in the affirmative, and the young man said,
"I thought so. I've seen you sometimes going along together. I noticed
you because you seemed so sisterly like, and you are sisters, I reckon."
They said "Yes."
"I've a good spanking horse, you seen," said James Cheshire. "I shall
get over th' ground rayther faster nor you done a-foot, eh? My word,
though, it must be nation cold on these bleak hills i' winter."
The sisters assented, and thanked the young farmer for taking them up.
"We are rather late," said they, "for we looked in on a friend, and the
rest of the mill-hands were gone on."
"Well," said the young farmer, "never mind that. I fancy Bess, my mare
here, can go a little faster nor they can. We shall very likely be at
Tidser as soon as they are."
"But you are not going to Tidser," said Jane, "your farm is just before
us there."
"Yay, I'm going to Tidser though. I've a bit of business to do there
before I go hom."
On drove the farmer at what he called a spanking rate; presently they
saw the young mill-people on the road before them.
"There are your companions," said James Cheshire; "we shall cut past
them like a flash of lightning."
"Oh," exclaimed Jane Dunster, "what will they say at seeing us riding
here?" and she blushed brightly.
"Say?" said the young farmer, smiling, "never mind what they'll say;
depend upon it, they'd like to be here theirsens."
James Cheshire cracked his whip. The horse flew along. The party of the
young mill-hands turned round, and on seeing Jane and Nancy in the cart,
uttered exclamations of surprise.
"My word, though!" said Mary Smedley, a fresh buxom lass, somewhat
inclined to stoutness.
"Well, if ever!" cried smart little Hannah Bowyer.
"Nay, then, what next?" said Tetty Wilton, a tall, thin girl of very
good looks.
The two sisters nodded and smiled to their companions; Jane still
blushing rosily, but Nancy sitting as pale and as gravely as if they
were going on some solemn business.
The only notice the farmer took was to turn with a broad, smiling face,
and shout to them, "Wouldn't you like to be here too?"
"Ay, take us up," shouted a number of voices together; but the farmer
cracked his whip, and giving them a nod and a dozen smiles in one, said,
"I can't stay. Ask the next farmer that comes up."
With this they drove on; the young farmer very merry and full of talk.
They were soon by the side of his farm. "There's a flock of sheep on
the turnips there," he said, proudly, "they're not to be beaten on this
side Ashbourne. And there are some black oxen, going for the night to
the straw-yard. Jolly fellows, those, eh? But I reckon you don't
understand much of farming stock?"
"No," said Jane, and was again surprised at Nancy adding, "I wish we
did. I think a farmer's life must be the very happiest of any."
"You think so?" said the farmer, turning and looking at her earnestly,
and evidently with some wonder. "You are right," said he. "You little
ones are knowing ones. You are right: it's the life for a king."
They were at the village. "Pray stop," said Jane, "and let us get down.
I would not for the world go up the village thus. It would make such a
talk!"
"Talk! who cares for talk?" said the farmer; "won't the youngsters we
left on the road talk?"
"Quite enough," said Jane.
"And are _you_ afraid of talk?" said the farmer to Nancy.
"I'm not afraid of it when I don't provoke it willfully," said Nancy;
"but we are poor girls, and can't afford to lose even the good word of
our acquaintance. You've been very kind in taking us up on the road; but
to drive us to our door would cause such wonder as would perhaps make us
wish we had not been obliged to you."
"Blame me, if you arn't right again!" said the young farmer,
thoughtfully. "These are scandal-loving times, and th' neebors might
plague you. That's a deep head of yourn, though--Nancy, I think your
sister caw'd you. Well, here I stop then."
He jumped down, and helped them out.
"If you will drive on first," said Jane, "we will walk on after, and we
are greatly obliged to you."
"Nay," said the young man, "I shall turn again here."
"But you've business."
"Oh! my business was to drive you here--that's all."
James Cheshire was mounting his cart, when Nancy stepped up, and said,
"Excuse me, sir, but you'll meet the mill-people on your return, and it
will make them talk all the more, as you have driven us past your farm.
Have you no business that you can do in Tidser, sir?"
"Gad! but thou'rt right again! Ay, I'll go on!" and with a crack of his
whip, and a "Good night!" he whirled into the village before them.
No sooner was he gone than Nancy, pressing her sister's arm to her side,
said, "There's the right man at last, dear Jane."
"What!" said Jane, yet blushing deeply at the same time, and her heart
beating quicker against her side. "Whatever are you talking of, Nancy?
That young farmer fall in love with a mill-girl?"
"He's done it," said Nancy; "I see it in him--I feel it in him. And I
feel, too, that he is true and stanch as steel."
Jane was silent. They walked on in silence. Jane's own heart responded
to what Nancy had said; she thought again and again on what he said. "I
have seen you sometimes;" "I noticed you because you seemed so
sisterly." "He must have a good heart," thought Jane; "but then he can
never think of a poor mill-girl like me."
The next morning they had to undergo plenty of raillery from their
companions. We will pass that over. For several days, as they passed to
and fro, they saw nothing of the young farmer. But one evening, as they
were again alone, having staid at the same acquaintance's as before, the
young farmer popped his head over a stone wall, and said, "Good evening
to you, young women." He was soon over the wall, and walked on with them
to the end of the town. On the Sunday at the chapel Jane saw Nancy's
grave face fixed on some object steadily, and, looking in the same
direction, was startled to see James Cheshire. Again her heart beat
pit-a-pat, and she thought, "Can he really be thinking of me?"
The moment chapel was over, James Cheshire was gone, stopping to speak
to no one. Nancy again pressed the arm of Jane to her side, as they
walked home, and said, "I was not wrong." Jane only replied by returning
her affectionate pressure.
Some days after, as Nancy Dunster was coming out of a shop in the
evening, after their return home from the mill, James Cheshire suddenly
put his hand on her shoulder, and, on her turning, shook her hand
cordially, and said, "Come along with me a bit. I must have a little
talk with you."
Nancy consented without remark or hesitation. James Cheshire walked on
quickly till they came near the fine old church which strikes travelers
as so superior to the place in which it is located, when he slackened
his pace, and taking Nancy's hand, began in a most friendly manner to
tell her how much he liked her and her sister. That, to make a short
matter of it, as was his way, he had made up his mind that the woman of
all others in the world that would suit him for a wife was her sister.
"But before I said so to her, I thought I would say so to you, Nancy,
for you are so sensible, I'm sure you will say what is best for us all."
Nancy manifested no surprise, but said calmly, "You are a well-to-do
farmer, Mr. Cheshire. You have friends of property; my sister, and--"
"Ay, and a mill-girl; I know all that. I've thought it all over, and so
far you are right again, my little one. But just hear what I've got to
say. I'm no fool, though I say it. I've an eye in my head and a head on
my shoulders, eh?"
Nancy smiled
"Well now, it s not _any_ mill-girl--mind you, it's not _any_
mill-girl; no, nor perhaps another in the kingdom, that would do for me.
I don't think mill-girls are in the main cut out for farmers' wives, any
more than farmers' wives are fit for mill-girls; but, you see, I've got
a notion that your sister is not only a very farrantly lass, but that
she's one that has particular good sense, though not so deep as you,
Nancy, neither. Well, I've a notion she can turn her hand to any thing,
and that she's a heart to do it when it's a duty. Isn't that so, eh? And
if it is so, then Jane Dunster's the lass for me; that is, if it's quite
agreeable."
Nancy pressed James Cheshire's hand, and said. "You are very kind."
"Not a bit of it," said James.
"Well," continued Nancy; "but I would have you to consider what your
friends will say, and whether you will not be made unhappy by them."
"Why, as to that," said James Cheshire, interrupting her, "mark me, Miss
Dunster. I don't ask my friends for any thing. I can farm my own farm;
buy my own cattle; drive my spring-cart, without any advice or
assistance of theirs; and therefore I don't think I shall ask their
advice in the matter of a wife, eh? No, no, on that score I'm made up.
My name's Independent, and, at a word, the only living thing I mean to
ask advice of is yourself. If you, Miss Dunster, approve of the match,
it's settled, as far as I'm concerned."
"Then so far," said Nancy, "as you and my sister are concerned, without
reference to worldly circumstances, I approve it with all my heart. I
believe you to be as good and honest as I know my sister to be. Oh, Mr.
Cheshire! she is one of ten thousand."
"Well, I was sure of it," said the young farmer; "and so now you must
tell your sister all about it; and if all's right, chalk me a white
chalk inside of my gate as you go past i' th' morning, and to-morrow
evening I'll come up and see you."
Here the two parted with a cordial shake of the hand. The novel signal
of an accepted love was duly discovered by James Cheshire on his
gate-post, when he issued forth at day-break, and that evening he was
sitting at tea with Jane and Nancy in the little cottage, having brought
in his cart a basket of eggs, apples, fresh butter, and a pile of the
richest pikelets (crumpets), country pikelets, very different to
town-made ones, for tea.
We need not follow out the courtship of James Cheshire and Jane Dunster.
It was cordial and happy. James insisted that both the sisters should
give immediate notice to quit the mill-work, to spare themselves the
cold and severe walks which the winter now occasioned them. The sisters
had improved their education in their evenings. They were far better
read and informed than most farmers' daughters. They had been, since
they came to Tideswell, teachers in the Sunday-school. There was
comparatively little to be learned in a farm-house for the wife in
winter, and James Cheshire therefore proposed to the sisters to go for
three months to Manchester into a wholesale house, to learn as much as
they could of the plain sewing and cutting out of household linen. The
person in question made up all sorts of household linen, sheets,
pillow-cases, shirts, and other things; in fact, a great variety of
articles. Through an old acquaintance he got them introduced there,
avowedly to prepare them for housekeeping. It was a sensible step, and
answered well. At spring, to cut short opposition from his own
relatives, which began to show itself, for these things did not fail to
be talked of, James Cheshire got a license, and proceeding to
Manchester, was then and there married, and came home with his wife and
sister.
The talk and gossip which this wedding made all round the country, was
no little; but the parties themselves were well satisfied with their
mutual choice, and were happy. As the spring advanced, the duties of the
household grew upon Mrs. Cheshire. She had to learn the art of
cheese-making, butter-making, of all that relates to poultry, calves,
and household management. But in these matters she had the aid of an old
servant, who had done all this for Mr. Cheshire, since he began farming.
She took a great liking to her mistress, and showed her with hearty
good-will how every thing was done; and as Jane took a deep interest in
it, she rapidly made herself mistress of the management of the house, as
well as of the house itself. She did not disdain, herself, to take a
hand at the churn, that she might be familiar with the whole process of
butter-making, and all the signs by which the process is conducted to a
successful issue. It was soon seen that no farmer's wife could produce a
firmer, fresher, sweeter pound of butter. It was neither _swelted_ by
too hasty churning, nor spoiled, as is too often the case, by the
buttermilk or by water being left in it, for want of well kneading and
pressing. It was deliciously sweet, because the cream was carefully put
in the cleanest vessels and well attended to. Mrs. Cheshire, too, might
daily be seen kneeling by the side of the cheese-pan, separating the
curd, taking off the whey, filling the cheese-vat with the curd, and
putting the cheese herself into press. Her cheese-chamber displayed as
fine a set of well-salted, well-colored, well-turned and regular cheeses
as ever issued from that or any other farm-house.
James Cheshire was proud of his wife: and Jane herself found a most
excellent helper in Nancy. Nancy took particularly to housekeeping; saw
that all the rooms were exquisitely clean; that every thing was in nice
repair; that not only the master and mistress, but the servants had
their food prepared in a wholesome and attractive manner. The eggs she
stored up; and as fruit came into season, had it collected for market,
and for a judicious household use. She made the tea and coffee morning
and evening, and did every thing but preside at the table. There was not
a farm-house for twenty miles round that wore an air of so much
brightness and evident good management as that Of James Cheshire. For
Nancy, from the first moment of their acquaintance, he had conceived a
most profound respect. In all cases that required counsel, though he
consulted freely with his wife, he would never decide till they had had
Nancy's opinion and sanction.
And James Cheshire prospered. But, spite of this, he did not escape the
persecution from his relations that Nancy had foreseen. On all hands he
found coldness. None of them called on him. They felt scandalized at his
_evening_ himself, as they called it, to a mill-girl. He was taunted,
when they met at market, with having been caught with a pretty face; and
told that they thought he had had more sense than to marry a dressed
doll with a witch by her side.
At first James Cheshire replied with a careless waggery, "The pretty
face makes capital butter though, eh? The dressed doll turns out a
tolerable dairy, eh? Better," added James, "than a good many can, that I
know, who have neither pretty faces, nor have much taste in dressing to
crack of."
The allusion to Nancy's dwarfish plainness was what peculiarly provoked
James Cheshire. He might have laughed at the criticisms on his wife,
though the envious neighbors' wives did say that it was the old servant
and not Mrs. Cheshire who produced such fine butter and cheese; for
wherever she appeared, spite of envy and detraction, her lovely person
and quiet good sense, and the growing rumor of her good management, did
not fail to produce a due impression. And James had prepared to laugh it
off; but it would not do. He found himself getting every now and then
angry and unsettled by it. A coarse jest on Nancy at any time threw him
into a desperate fit of indignation. The more the superior merit of his
wife was known, the more seemed to increase the envy and venom of some
of his relatives. He saw, too, that it had an effect on his wife. She
was often sad, and sometimes in tears.
One day when this occurred, James Cheshire said, as they sat at tea,
"I've made up my mind. Peace in this life is a jewel. Better is a dinner
of herbs with peace, than a stalled ox with strife. Well now, I'm
determined to have peace. Peace and luv," said he, looking
affectionately at his wife and Nancy, "peace and luv, by God's blessing,
have settled down on this house; but there are stings here and stings
there, when we go out of doors. We must not only have peace and luv in
the house, but peace all round it. So I've made up my mind. I'm for
America!"
"For America!" exclaimed Jane. "Surely you can not be in earnest."
"I never was more in earnest in my life," said James Cheshire. "It is
true I do very well on this farm here, though it's a cowdish situation;
but from all I can learn I can do much better in America. I can there
farm a much better farm of my own. We can have a much finer climate
than this Peak country, and our countrymen still about us. Now, I want
to know what makes a man's native land pleasant to him?--the kindness of
his relations and friends. But then, if a man's relation are not
kind?--if they get a conceit into them, that because they are relations,
they are to choose a man's wife for him, and sting him and snort at him
because he has a will of his own?--why, then, I say, God send a good big
herring-pool between me and such relations! My relations, by way of
showing their natural affection, spit spite and bitterness. You, dear
wife and sister, have none of yourn to spite you. In the house we have
peace and luv. Let us take the peace and luv, and leave the bitterness
behind."
There was a deep silence.
"It is a serious proposal," at length said Jane, with tears in her eyes.
"What says Nancy?" asked James.
"It is a serious proposal," said Nancy, "but it is good. I feel it so."
There was another deep silence; and James Cheshire said, "Then it is
decided."
"Think of it," said Jane, earnestly--"think well of it."
"I have thought of it long and well, my dear. There are some of these
chaps that call me relation that I shall not keep my hands off, if I
stay among them--and I fain would. But for the present I will say no
more; but," added he, rising and bringing a book from his desk, "here is
a book by one Morris Birkbeck--read it, both of you, and then let me
know your minds."
The sisters read. On the following Lady-day James Cheshire had turned
over his farm advantageously to another, and he, his wife, Nancy, and
the old servant, Mary Spendlove, all embarked at Liverpool, and
transferred themselves to the United States, and then to the State of
Illinois. Five-and-twenty years have rolled over since that day. We
could tell a long and curious story of the fortunes of James Cheshire
and his family--from the days when, half repenting of his emigration and
his purchase, he found himself in a rough country, amid rough and
spiteful squatters, and lay for months with a brace of pistols under his
pillow, and a great sword by his bedside for fear of robbery and murder.
But enough, that at this moment, James Cheshire, in a fine cultivated
country, sees his ample estate cultivated by his sons, while as colonel
and magistrate he dispenses the law and receives the respectful homage
of the neighborhood. Nancy Dunster, now styled Mrs. Dunster, the Mother
in Israel--the promoter of schools and the counselor of old and
young--still lives. Years have improved rather than deteriorated her
short and stout exterior. The long exercise of wise thoughts and the
play of benevolent feelings, have given even a sacred beauty to her
homely features. The dwarf has disappeared, and there remains instead, a
grave but venerable matron--honored like a queen.
MOORISH DOMESTIC LIFE.
At the threshold of the door, leading from the court-yard to the house,
the daughters of Sidi Mahmoud received us with cordial welcome. They are
two very beautiful girls. The eldest, who is about fourteen years of
age, particularly interested me. There is an expression in her soft,
intelligent, eyes which shows that she feels the oppression of
captivity. Her features are not those of a regular beauty; but the grace
which marks all her movements, the soul breathing animation which lights
up her countenance, and the alternate blush and pallor which overspread
her delicate cheek, seem to mark the fair Zuleica for a heroine of
romance.
While I gazed on her, I thought she looked like a personification of her
lovely namesake, the glorious creation of Byron's muse. Her beautiful
chestnut hair was unfortunately (in compliance with the custom of the
country) tinged with a reddish dye. It was combed to the nape of the
neck, and a red woolen band was closely twisted round it, so that the
most beautiful adornment of a female head was converted into a long,
stiff rouleau, which either dangled down her back, or was hidden in the
folds of her dress. On her head she wore a small, closely-fitting fez.
Her sister, a pretty, smiling girl of ten years of age, had her hair
arranged in the same manner, and she wore the same sort of fez. She was
wrapped in a shawl of a clear sea-green hue, which was draped round her
figure very gracefully, but entirely concealed her arms. Her full
trowsers of rose-colored calico descended nearly to her ankles. The
costume of the elder sister was marked by greater elegance. Her shawl
was dark red, but of less size and thinner texture than that worn by her
sister. After we had been a few minutes together, we became quite
familiar friends, and the young ladies permitted me to have a minute
inspection of their dresses. They conducted us to their drawing-room,
or, as they called it, their _salon_. This apartment, like all the rooms
in the house, is exceedingly small; and on my expressing some surprise
at its limited dimensions, the elder sister replied in her broken
French, "Mauresques pas tener salons pas jolies comme toi Français;" by
which she meant to say that their houses or saloons are not so fine as
those of the Europeans; for they call all Europeans, indiscriminately,
French. There was but little furniture in the drawing-room.
Over the middle part of the floor was spread a very handsome Turkey
carpet; and along the sides of the apartment were laid several carpets
of various kinds and patterns. In one corner of the room there was a
looking-lass in a miserable-looking frame, and beside it a loaded
musket. Whether this weapon be destined for the defense of the elegant
mirror or of the lovely Zuleica, I pretend not to say.
Having observed a telescope fixed at the window, I expressed some
surprise. Zuleica, who converses very intelligibly in what she calls
_lingua franca_ (a jargon principally composed of French words),
informed me that this telescope constitutes her principal source of
amusement, and that she is almost continually occupied in looking
through it, to watch the arrival of her friends, and the movements of
the steamers in the harbor. The walls of the apartment were simply
whitewashed, and the window and doors were arched as a precaution
against accidents in the earthquakes so frequent in this country. The
only decorations on the walls were two little frames, containing
passages from the Koran.
Among the other articles of furniture contained in this apartment, I
must not omit to mention a small table, on which lay some sheets of
paper (having Arabic characters inscribed on them) a book, and an
inkstand.
When I entered the room, the young ladies brought a straw stool, and
requested me to sit down on it, while they themselves squatted on the
floor. A white muslin curtain hung over a doorway, which led to the
sleeping apartment of the father and mother. Nothing could be more plain
than the furniture of this apartment. Two small French iron bedsteads
indicated, it is true, great advancement in civilization; and between
these bedsteads a piece of carpet covered the rough red tiles with which
the floor was paved. There was neither washing-stand nor toilet-table;
but, indeed, the apartment was so small that there was no room for them.
I was next conducted to the boudoir, where coffee, pomegranates, melons,
and sweetmeats were served. To decline taking any thing that is offered
is regarded as an affront by the Mohammedans, so I was compelled to
receive in my bare hand an immensely large slice of some kind of sweet
cake, spread over with a thick jelly.
The collation being ended, the young ladies conducted me to their own
sleeping-room. Here we found a slave at work. She was a negress, for
whom I was told Sidi Mahmoud had paid 600 francs. I suppose this negress
saw something irresistibly droll in my appearance, for as soon as I
appeared she burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, and it was some
time ere she recovered her composure.
Little Zuleica very good-naturedly opened several trunks to gratify me
with the sight of some of her best dresses. She drew forth a number of
garments of various descriptions, all composed of rich and beautiful
materials. When I say that she had at least twenty elegant tunics of
silk or gauze, and several others richly embroidered with gold, I do not
overrate the number. I expressed my astonishment at the number and
variety of the garments, of which I imagined I had seen the last; but
Zuleica turned to me with an arch smile, which seemed to say she had a
still greater surprise in store for me. Then diving into the lowest
depths of one of the trunks, she drew forth a complete bridal costume.
It consisted of a robe or tunic of rich red damask silk, embroidered
with gold, a gold girdle, a splendid caftan, loose trowsers of silk,
and a vail of white gauze, several yards in length, and sprigged with
gold. I was also shown several valuable jeweled ornaments, destined to
be worn with this splendid costume.
Seeing the bridal dress thus ready prepared I conjectured that Zuleica
was betrothed, and I ventured to ask her when she was to be married. At
this question she blushed and looked confused; then, after a little
hesitation, she replied, "Quand trouver mari."...
Among Zuleica's ornaments were several set with splendid diamonds and
pearls. My hostess, after having examined and admired them, asked
whether the jewels were all real. Zuleica looked a little offended at
this question, and answered proudly, "Mauresques jamais tenir ce que
n'est pas vrai." We were greatly amused by the interest and curiosity
with which these Moorish girls examined every thing we wore, and even
asked the price of any article which particularly pleased them. No part
of my dress escaped the scrutinizing eyes of Zuleica. She was
particularly charmed with a small handkerchief I wore round my throat. I
took it off and, requested her to accept it as a token of my
remembrance.
The eldest sister had so engaged my attention that the younger one
appeared to think I had neglected her, and she timidly requested that,
as I had seen all Zuleica's beautiful things, I would look at some of
hers also. Accordingly, she began showing me her dolls, meanwhile
relating to me in her _lingua franca_ the history of each. These dolls
were attired in the costumes of Moorish ladies, and little Gumara
assured me that the dresses were all her own making. After I had admired
them, and complimented Gumara on her taste, she told me with an air of
mystery that she had yet one thing more to show. So saying, she produced
a doll with a huge black beard and fierce countenance, and dressed
completely in imitation of the Sultan. While I was engaged in admiring
it, Sidi Mahmoud entered. He had heard that I could speak Italian, and
he came to have a little conversation with me about Italy, a country
with which he is acquainted, and in which he has himself traveled much.
The father's unexpected appearance dismayed the young ladies, who
colored deeply while they endeavored to hide the miniature effigy of the
Sultan. I afterward learned that Zuleica and her sister are brought up
under such rigorous restraint, that even the possession of a doll in
male attire is a thing prohibited.--_Leaves from a Lady's Diary._
* * * * *
The works of men of genius alone, where great faults are united with
great beauties, afford proper matter for criticism. Genius is always
executive, bold, and daring; which at the same time that it commands
attention, is sure to provoke criticism. It is the regular, cold, and
timid composer who escapes censure and deserves praise.--_Sir Joshua
Reynolds._
[From Household Words.]
THE RAILWAY STATION.
They judge not well, who deem that once among us
A Spirit moved that now from earth has fled;
Who say that at the busy sounds which throng us,
Its shining wings forevermore have sped.
Not all the turmoil of the Age of Iron
Can scare that Spirit hence; like some sweet bird
That loud harsh voices in its cage environ,
It sings above them all, and will be heard!
Not, for the noise of axes or of hammers,
Will that sweet bird forsake her chosen nest;
Her warblings pierce through all those deafening clamors
But surer to their echoes in the breast.
And not the Past alone, with all its guerdon
Of twilight sounds and shadows, bids them rise;
But soft, above the noontide heat and burden
Of the stern present, float those melodies.
Not with the baron bold, the minstrel tender,
Not with the ringing sound of shield and lance,
Not with the Field of Gold in all its splendor,
Died out the generous flame of old Romance.
Still, on a nobler strife than tilt or tourney,
Rides forth the errant knight, with brow elate;
Still patient pilgrims take, in hope, their journey;
Still meek and cloistered spirits "stand and wait."
Still hath the living, moving world around us,
Its legends, fair with honor, bright with truth;
Still, as in tales that in our childhood bound us,
Love holds the fond traditions of its youth.
We need not linger o'er the fading traces
Of lost divinities; or seek to hold
Their serious converse 'mid Earth's green waste-places,
Or by her lonely fountains, as of old:
For, far remote from Nature's fair creations,
Within the busy mart, the crowded street,
With sudden, sweet, unlooked-for revelations
Of a bright presence we may chance to meet;
E'en _now_, beside a restless tide's commotion,
I stand and hear, in broken music, swell
Above the ebb and flow of Life's great ocean,
An under-song of greeting and farewell.
For here are meetings: moments that inherit
The hopes and wishes, that through months and years
Have held such anxious converse with the spirit,
That now its joy can only speak in tears;
And here are partings: hands that soon must sever,
Yet clasp the firmer; heart, that unto heart,
Was ne'er so closely bound before, nor ever
So near the other as when now they part;
And here Time holds his steady pace unbroken,
For all that crowds within his narrow scope;
For all the language, uttered and unspoken,
That will return when Memory comforts Hope!
One short and hurried moment, and forever
Flies, like a dream, its sweetness and its pain,
And, for the hearts that love, the hands that sever,
Who knows what meetings are in store again?
They who are left, unto their homes returning,
With musing step, trace o'er each by-gone scene;
And they upon their journey--doth no yearning,
No backward glance, revert to what hath been?
Yes! for awhile, perchance, a tear-drop starting,
Dims the bright scenes that greet the eye and mind;
But here--as ever in life's cup of parting--
Theirs is the bitterness who stay behind!
So in life's sternest, last farewell, may waken
A yearning thought, a backward glance be thrown
By them who leave: but oh! how blest the token,
To those who stay behind when THEY are gone!
THE SICK MAN'S PRAYER
Come, soft sleep!
Bid thy balm my hot eyes meet--
Of the long night's heavy stillness,
Of the loud clock's ceaseless beat,
Of the weary thought of illness,
Of the room's oppressive heat--
Steep me in oblivion deep,
That my weary, weary brain,
May have rest from all its pain;
Come, oh blessedness again,--
Come, soft sleep!
Come, soft sleep!
Let this weary tossing end,
Let my anguished watch be ceasing,
Yet no dreams thy steps attend,
When thou bring'st from pain releasing.
Fancies wild to rest may lend
Sense of waking misery deep,
Calm as death, oh, on me sink,
That my brain may quiet drink,
And neither feel, nor know, nor think.
Come, soft sleep!
W. C. BENNETT.
[From the Autobiography of Leigh Hunt, unpublished.]
SOPHISTRY OF ANGLERS.--IZAAK WALTON.
Many brave and good men have been anglers, as well as many men of a
different description; but their goodness would have been complete, and
their bravery of a more generous sort, had they possessed self-denial
enough to look the argument in the face, and abstained from procuring
themselves pleasure at the expense of a needless infliction. The charge
is not answered by the favorite retorts about effeminacy, God's
providence, neighbors' faults, and doing "no worse." They are simple
beggings of the question. I am not aware that anglers, or sportsmen in
general, are braver than the ordinary run of mankind. Sure I am that a
great fuss is made if they hurt their fingers; much more if they lie
gasping, like fish, on the ground. I am equally sure that many a man who
would not hurt a fly is as brave as they are; and as to the reference to
God's providence, it is an edge-tool that might have been turned against
themselves by any body who chose to pitch them into the river, or knock
out their brains. They may lament, if they please, that they should be
forced to think of pain and evil at all; but the lamentation would not
be very magnanimous under any circumstances; and it is idle, considering
that the manifest ordination and progress of things demand that such
thoughts be encountered. The question still returns: Why do they seek
amusement in sufferings which are unnecessary and avoidable? and till
they honestly and thoroughly answer this question, they must be content
to be looked upon as disingenuous reasoners, who are determined to
retain a selfish pleasure.
As to old Izaak Walton, who is put forward as a substitute for argument
on this question, and whose sole merits consisted in his having a taste
for nature and his being a respectable citizen, the trumping him up into
an authority and a kind of saint is a burlesque. He was a writer of
conventionalities; who, having comfortably feathered his nest, as he
thought, both in this world and in the world to come, concluded he had
nothing more to do than to amuse himself by putting worms on a hook, and
fish into his stomach, and so go to heaven, chuckling and singing
psalms. There would be something in such a man and in his book,
offensive to a real piety, if that piety did not regard whatever has
happened in the world, great and small, with an eye that makes the best
of what is perplexing, and trusts to eventual good out of the worst.
Walton was not the hearty and thorough advocate of nature he is supposed
to have been. There would have been something to say for him on that
score, had he looked upon the sum of evil as a thing not to be
diminished. But he shared the opinions of the most commonplace
believers in sin and trouble, and only congratulated himself on being
exempt from their consequences. The overweening old man found himself
comfortably off somehow; and it is good that he did. It is a comfort to
all of us, wise or foolish. But to reverence him is a jest. You might as
well make a god of an otter. Mr. Wordsworth, because of the servitor
manners of Walton and his biographies of divines (all _anglers_), wrote
an idle line about his "meekness" and his "heavenly memory." When this
is quoted by the gentle brethren, it will be as well if they add to it
another passage from the same poet, which returns to the only point at
issue, and upsets the old gentleman altogether Mr. Wordsworth's
admonition to us is,
"Never to link our pastime, or our pride,
With suffering to the meanest thing that lives."
It was formerly thought effeminate not to hunt Jews; then not to roast
heretics; then not to bait bears and bulls; then not to fight cocks, and
to throw sticks at them. All these evidences of manhood became gradually
looked upon as no such evidences at all, but things fit only for manhood
to renounce; yet the battles of Waterloo and of Sobraon have been won,
and Englishmen are not a jot the less brave all over the world. Probably
they are braver, that is to say, more deliberately brave, more serenely
valiant; also more merciful to the helpless, and that is the crown of
valor.
It was during my infancy, if I am not mistaken, that there lived at
Hampstead (a very unfit place for such a resident), a man whose name I
suppress lest there should be possessors of it surviving, and who was a
famous cock-fighter. He was rich and idle, and therefore had no bounds
to set to the unhappy passions that raged within him. It is related of
this man, that, having lost a bet on a favorite bird, he tied the noble
animal to a spit in his kitchen before the fire, and notwithstanding the
screams of the sufferer and the indignant cries of the beholders, whose
interference he wildly resisted with the poker, actually persisted in
keeping it there burning, till he fell down in his fury and died.
Let us hope he was mad. What, indeed, is more probable? It is always a
great good, when the crimes of a fellow-creature can be traced to
madness; to some fault of the temperament or organization; some "jangle
of the sweet bells;" some overbalance in the desired equipoise of the
faculties, originating, perhaps in accident or misfortune. It does not
subject us the more to their results. On the contrary, it sets us on our
guard against them. And, meantime, it diminishes one of the saddest,
most injurious, and most preposterous notions of human ignorance--the
belief in the wickedness of our kind.
But I have said enough of these barbarous customs.
[From Household Words.]
GLOBES, AND HOW THEY ARE MADE.
One of the most remarkable of self-educated men, James Ferguson, when a
poor agricultural laborer, constructed a globe. A friend had made him a
present of "Gordon's Geographical Grammar," which, he says, "at that
time was to me a great treasure. There is no figure of a globe in it,
although it contains a tolerable description of the globes and their
use. From this description I made a globe in three weeks, at my
father's, having turned the ball thereof out of a piece of wood; which
ball I covered with paper, and delineated a map of the world upon it,
made the meridian ring and horizon of wood, covered them with paper, and
graduated them; and was happy to find that by my globe (which was the
first I ever saw) I could solve the problems."
"But," he adds, "this was not likely to afford me bread."
In a few years this ingenious man discovered the conditions upon which
he could earn his bread, by a skill which did not suffer under the
competition of united labor. He had made also a wooden clock. He carried
about his globe and his clock, and "began to pick up some money about
the country" by cleaning clocks. He became a skilled clock-cleaner. For
six-and-twenty years afterward he earned his bread as an artist. He then
became a scientific lecturer, and in connection with his pursuits, was
also a globe maker. His name may be seen upon old globes, associated
with that of Senex. The demand for globes must have been then very
small, but Ferguson had learned that cheapness is produced by
labor-saving contrivances. A pretty instrument for graduating lines upon
the meridian ring, once belonging to Ferguson, is in use at this hour in
the manufactory of Messrs. Malby and Son. The poor lad "who made a globe
in three weeks" finally won the honors and riches that were due to his
genius and industry. But he would never have earned a living in the
continuance of his first attempt to turn a ball out of a piece of wood,
cover it with paper, and draw a map of the world upon it. The nicest
application of his individual skill, and the most careful employment of
his scientific knowledge, would have been wasted upon those portions of
the work in which the continued application of common routine labor is
the most efficient instrument of production.
Let us contrast the successive steps of Ferguson's first experiment in
globe-making with the processes of a globe manufactory.
A globe is not made of "a ball turned out of a piece of wood." If a
solid ball of large dimensions were so turned, it would be too heavy for
ordinary use. Erasmus said of one of the books of Thomas Aquinas, "No
man can carry it about, much less get it into his head;" and so would it
be said of a solid globe. If it were made of hollow wood, it would warp
and split at the junction of its parts. A globe is made of paper and
plaster. It is a beautiful combination of solidity and lightness. It is
perfectly balanced upon its axis. It retains its form under every
variety of temperature. Time affects it less than most other works of
art. It is as durable as a Scagliola column.
A globe may not, at first sight, appear a cheap production. It is not,
of necessity, a low-priced production, and yet it is essentially cheap;
for nearly all the principles of manufacture that are conditions of
cheapness are exhibited in the various stages of its construction. There
are only four globe-makers in England, and one in Scotland. The annual
sale of globes is only about a thousand pair. The price of a pair of
globes varies from six shillings to fifty pounds. But from the smallest
2-inch, to the largest 36-inch globe, a systematic process is carried on
at every step of its formation. We select this illustration of cheapness
as a contrast, in relation to price and extent of demand, to the lucifer
match. But it is, at the same time, a parallel in principle. If a globe
were not made upon a principle involving the scientific combination of
skilled labor, it would be a mere article of luxury from its excessive
costliness. It is now a most useful instrument in education. For
educational purposes the most inexpensive globe is as valuable as that
of the highest price. All that properly belongs to the excellence of the
instrument is found in combination with the commonest stained wood
frame, as perfectly as with the most highly-finished frame of rose-wood
or mahogany.
The mould, if we may so express it, of a globe is turned out of a piece
of wood. This sphere need not be mathematically accurate. It is for
rough work, and flaws and cracks are of little consequence. This wooden
ball has an axis, a piece of iron wire at each pole. And here we may
remark, that, at every stage of the process, the revolution of a sphere
upon its axis, under the hands of the workman, is the one great
principle which renders every operation one of comparative ease and
simplicity. The labor would be enormously multiplied if the same class
of operations had to be performed upon a cube. The solid mould, then, of
the embryo globe is placed on its axis in a wooden frame. In a very
short time a boy will form a pasteboard globe upon its surface. He first
covers it entirely with strips of strong paper, thoroughly wet, which
are in a tub of water at his side. The slight inequalities produced by
the overlapping of the strips are immaterial. The saturated paper is not
suffered to dry; but is immediately covered over with a layer of pasted
paper, also cut in long narrow slips. A third layer of similarly pasted
paper--brown paper and white being used alternately--is applied, and
then, a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth. Here the pasting process ends for
globes of moderate size. For the large ones it is carried farther. This
wet pasteboard ball has now to be dried--placed upon its axis in a rack.
If we were determined to follow the progress of this individual ball
through all its stages, we should have to wait a fortnight before it
advanced another step. But as the large factory of Messrs. Malby and Son
has many scores of globes all rolling onward to perfection, we shall be
quite satisfied to witness the next operation performed upon a
pasteboard sphere that began to exist some weeks earlier, and is now
hard to the core.
The wooden ball, with its solid paper covering, is placed on its axis. A
sharp cutting instrument, fixed on a bench, is brought into contact with
the surface of the sphere, which is made to revolve. In less time than
we write, the pasteboard ball is cut in half. There is no adhesion to
the wooden mould, for the first coating of paper was simply _wetted_.
Two bowls of thick card now lie before us, with a small hole in each,
made by the axis of the wooden ball. But a junction is very soon
effected. Within every globe there is a piece of wood--we may liken it
to a round ruler--of the exact length of the inner surface of the sphere
from pole to pole. A thick wire runs through this wood, and originally
projected some two or three inches at each end. This stick is placed
upright in a vice. The semi-globe is nailed to one end of the stick,
upon which it rests, when the wire is passed through its center. It is
now reversed, and the edges of the card rapidly covered with glue. The
edges of the other semi-globe are instantly brought into contact, the
other end of the wire passing through its center in the same way, and a
similar nailing to the stick taking place. We have now a paper globe,
with its own axis, which will be its companion for the whole term of its
existence.
The paper globe is next placed on its axis in a frame, of which one side
is a semi-circular piece of metal; the horizon of a globe cut in half
would show its form. A tub of white composition--a compound of whiting,
glue, and oil is on the bench. The workman dips his hand into this
"gruel thick and slab," and rapidly applies it to the paper sphere with
tolerable evenness: but, as it revolves, the semi-circle of metal clears
off the superfluous portions. The ball of paper is now a ball of plaster
externally. Time again enters largely into the manufacture. The first
coating must thoroughly dry before the next is applied; and so again
till the process has been repeated four or five times. Thus, when we
visit a globe workshop, we are at first surprised at the number of white
balls, from three inches' diameter to three feet, which occupy a large
space. They are all steadily advancing toward completion. They can not
be hurriedly dried. The duration of their quiescent state must depend
upon the degrees of the thermometer in the ordinary atmosphere. They
cost little. They consume nothing beyond a small amount of rent. As they
advance to the dignity of perfect spheres, increased pains are taken in
the application of the plaster. At last they are polished. Their surface
is as hard and as fine as ivory. But, beautiful as they are, they may,
like many other beautiful things, want a due equipoise. They must be
perfectly balanced. They must move upon their poles with the utmost
exactness. A few shot, let in here and there, correct all
irregularities. And now the paper and plaster sphere is to be endued
with intelligence.
What may be called the artistical portion of globe-making here
commences. In the manufactory we are describing there are two skilled
workers, who may take their rank as artists, but whose skill is limited,
and at the same time perfected, by the uniformity of their operations.
One of these artists, a young woman, who has been familiar with the
business from her earliest years, takes the polished globe in her lap,
for the purpose of marking it with lines of direction for covering it
with engraved strips, which will ultimately form a perfect map. The
inspection of a finished globe will show that the larger divisions of
longitude are expressed by lines drawn from pole to pole, and those of
latitude by a series of concentric rings. The polished plaster has to be
covered with similar lines. These lines are struck with great rapidity,
and with mathematical truth, by an instrument called a "beam compass,"
in the use of which this workwoman is most expert. The sphere is now
ready for receiving the map, which is engraved in fourteen distinct
pieces. The arctic and antarctic poles form two circular pieces, from
which the lines of longitude radiate. These having been fitted and
pasted, one of the remaining twelve pieces, containing 30 degrees, is
also pasted on the sphere, in the precise space where the lines of
longitude have been previously marked its lines of latitude
corresponding in a similar manner. The paper upon which these portions
of the earth's surface are engraved is thin and extremely tough. It is
rubbed down with the greatest care, through all the stages of this
pasting process. We have at length a globe covered with a plain map, so
perfectly joined that every line and every letter fit together as if
they had been engraved in one piece--which, of course, would be
absolutely impossible for the purpose of covering a ball.
The artist who thus covers the globe, called a paster, is also a
colorer. This is, of necessity, a work which can not be carried on with
any division of labor. It is not so with the coloring of an atlas. A map
passes under many hands in the coloring. A series of children, each
using one color, produce in combination a map colored in all its parts,
with the rapidity and precision of a machine. But a globe must be
colored by one hand. It is curious to observe the colorer working
without a pattern. By long experience the artist knows how the various
boundaries are to be defined, with pink continents, and blue islands,
and the green oceans, connecting the most distant regions. To a
contemplative mind, how many thoughts must go along with the work, as he
covers Europe with indications of populous cities, and has little to do
with Africa and Australia but to mark the coast lines; as year after
year he has to make some variation in the features of the great
American continent, which indicates the march of the human family over
once trackless deserts, while the memorable places of the ancient world
undergo few changes but those of name. And then, as he is finishing a
globe for the cabin of some "great ammirall," may he not think that, in
some frozen nook of the Arctic Sea, the friendly Esquimaux may come to
gaze upon his work, and seeing how petty a spot England is upon the
ball, wonder what illimitable riches nature spontaneously produces in
that favored region, some of which is periodically scattered by her
ships through those dreary climes in the search for some unknown road
amidst everlasting icebergs, while he would gladly find a short track to
the sunny south. And then, perhaps, higher thoughts may come into his
mind; and as this toy of a world grows under his fingers, and as he
twists it around upon its material axis, he may think of the great
artificer of the universe, having the feeling, if not knowing the words
of the poet:
"In ambient air this ponderous ball HE hung."
Contemplative, or not, the colorer steadily pursues his uniform labor,
and the sphere is at length fully colored.
The globe has now to be varnished with a preparation technically known
as "white hard," to which some softening matter is added to prevent the
varnish cracking. This is a secret which globe-makers preserve. Four
coats of varnish complete the work.
And next the ball has to be mounted. We have already mentioned an
instrument by which the brass meridian ring is accurately graduated;
that is, marked with lines representing 360 degrees, with corresponding
numerals. Of whatever size the ring is, an index-hand, connected with
the graduating instrument, shows the exact spot where the degree is to
be marked with a graver. The operation is comparatively rapid; but for
the largest globes it involves considerable expense. After great
trouble, the ingenious men whose manufactory we are describing, have
succeeded in producing cast-iron rings, with the degrees and figures
perfectly distinct; and these applied to 36-inch globes, instead of the
engraved meridians, make a difference of ten guineas in their price. For
furniture they are not so beautiful; for use they are quite as valuable.
There is only one other process which requires great nicety. The axis of
the globe revolves on the meridian ring, and of course it is absolutely
necessary that the poles should be exactly parallel. This is effected by
a little machine which drills each extremity at one and the same
instant; and the operation is termed poleing the meridian.
The mounting of the globe--the completion of a pair of globes--is now
handed over to the cabinet-maker. The cost of the material and the
elaboration of its workmanship determine the price.
Before we conclude, we would say a few words as to the limited nature
of the demand for globes. Our imperfect description of this manufacture
will have shown that experience, and constant application of ingenuity,
have succeeded in reducing to the lowest amount the labor employed in
the production of globes. The whole population of English globe-makers
does not exceed thirty or forty men, women, and boys. Globes are thus
produced at the lowest rate of cheapness, as regards the number of
laborers, and with very moderate profits to the manufacturer, on account
of the smallness of his returns. The _durability_ of globes is one great
cause of the limitation of the demand. Changes of fashion, or caprices
of taste, as to the mounting, new geographical discoveries, and modern
information as to the position and nomenclature of the stars, may
displace a few old globes annually, which then find their way from
brokers' shops into a class somewhat below that of their original
purchasers. But the pair of globes generally maintain for years their
original position in the school-room or the library. They are rarely
injured, and suffer very slight decay. The new purchasers represent that
portion of society which is seeking after knowledge, or desires to
manifest some pretension to intellectual tastes. The number of globes
annually sold represents to a certain extent the advance of education.
But if the labor-saving expedients did not exist in the manufacture the
cost would be much higher, and the purchasers greatly reduced in number.
The contrivances by which comparative cheapness is produced arise out of
the necessity of contending against the durability of the article by
encouraging a new demand. If these did not exist, the supply would
outrun the demand; the price of the article would less and less repay
the labor expended in its production; the manufacture of globes would
cease till the old globes were worn out, and the few rich and scientific
purchasers had again raised up a market.
* * * * *
THE BODY.--Among the strange compliments which superstition pays to the
Creator, is a scorn and contempt for the fleshy investiture which he has
bestowed on us, at least among Christians; for the Pagans were far more
pious in this respect; and Mohammed agreed with them in doing justice to
the beauty and dignity of the human frame. It is quite edifying, in the
Arabian Nights, to read the thanks that are so often and so rapturously
given to the Supreme Being for his bestowal of such charms on his
creatures. Nor was a greater than Mahomet of a nature to undervalue the
earthly temples of gentle and loving spirits. Ascetic mistakes have ever
originated in want of heartiness or of heart; in consciousness of
defect, or vulgarity of nature, or in spiritual pride. A well-balanced
body and soul never, we may be sure, gave way to it. What an
extraordinary flattery of the Deity to say, "Lord! I thank thee for this
jewel of a soul which I possess; but what a miserable casket thou hast
given me to put it in!"--_Leigh Hunt._
[From The Ladies' Companion]
LETTICE ARNOLD.
By the Author of "TWO OLD MEN'S TALES," "EMILIA WYNDHAM," &c.
[_Continued from page 35._]
CHAPTER V.
Since trifles make the sum of human things....
Oh! let the ungentle spirit learn from thence,
A small unkindness is a great offense:
Large favors to bestow we strive in vain,
But all may shun the guilt of giving pain.
HANNAH MORE.
If Lettice had made her reflections, and had started upon her new
undertaking with a heart yearning with the desire to perform its duties
well, Mrs. Melwyn had not been without undergoing a somewhat similar
process upon her side, and this was her course of thought:
"She had at first felt the utmost dislike to the plan.
"She had, in the course of her life, seen so much discomfort and
dissatisfaction arise upon both sides from this sort of connection, that
she had taken up quite a prejudice against any thing of the sort.
"It was a very great pity," she often said to herself, "that so it
should be, but the case was almost universal. If it could be otherwise,
what desirable connections might be formed in a world such as the
present! Such numbers of women of all ages, and all degrees of mental
qualifications, find themselves suddenly without resource, through the
accident of early death in the case of the professions, or of disaster
in commercial life; and so many others, through disease or advanced age,
or the still more cruel stroke of death, find themselves stranded,
lonely, and deserted, and languishing for a fireside friend. What
comfortable, beneficial unions might be brought about in such cases, one
should think; and yet why did they never or seldom turn out well?
"Faults there must be. Where did they lie?--On both sides," answered her
understanding. "Not surely alone upon the side of the new comer--the
paid one, consequently the obliged one, consequently the only one of the
parties who had duties that she was pledged to perform, and which, it is
true, she too often very imperfectly performed--but also upon the other.
She, it is true, is pledged to nothing but the providing meat, lodging,
and salary; but that will not dispense her from obligations as a
Christian, and as a member of the universal sisterhood, which are not
quite so easily discharged.
"It must double the difficulty to the new comer," thought Mrs. Melwyn,
"the being treated so carelessly as she too often is. How hard it must
be to perform duties such as hers, if they are not performed in love!
and how impossible it must be to love in such a case--unless we meet
with love. Even to be treated with consideration and kindness will not
suffice upon the one side, nor the most scrupulous endeavor to
discharge duty upon the other--people must try to _love_.
"How soothing to a poor, deserted orphan to be taken to the heart! How
sweet to forlorn old age to find a fresh object of affection! Ah, but
then these sort of people seem often so disagreeable, do one's best, one
can not love or like them! But why do they seem so disagreeable? Partly
because people will overlook nothing--have no mutual indulgence in
relations which require so much. If one's child has little ways one does
not quite like, who thinks of hating her for it? If one's mother is a
little provoking and tedious under the oppressive weight of years or
sickness, who thinks of making a great hardship of it? But if the poor,
humble friend is only a little awkward or ungainly, she is odious; and
if the poor, deserted mother, or widow, wife, or aged suffering creature
is a little irritable or tedious, she is _such_ a tyrant!
"Oh how I wish!...
"Well, Catherine is a sensible, well-judging creature, and she assures
me this Miss Arnold is a remarkably sweet-tempered, affectionate,
modest, judicious girl. Why should I not try to make such a being love
me? Why should we not be very happy together? There is Randall, to be
sure, sets herself extremely against it; but, as Catherine says, 'Is
Randall to be mistress in this family, or am I?' It is come quite to
that point. And then it will be a great thing to have somebody between
me and Randall. She will not be so necessary to me then, whatever she
may be to the general; and when she makes herself so disagreeable, if
this young lady is as comfortable to me as Catherine says she will be, I
really shall not so much care.
"Then," continuing her meditations, which, though I put down in black
and white, were _thought_, not spoken, "then Catherine says she is so
greatly to be pitied, and is so exemplary; and she said, in her darling,
coaxing way, 'dear mamma, it will give you so much pleasure to make the
poor thing a little amends for all her hardships, and if poor papa is a
little cross at times, it will be quite an interest to you to contrive
to make up for it. She will be quite a daughter to you, and, in one
respect, you will have more pleasure in making her happy than even in
your own loving daughter, because one is dear from our natural
affections, and the other will be so from generous beneficence; and
though natural affection is such a sweet, precious, inestimable thing,
generous beneficence is yet nobler, and brings us still nearer to God.'
"If I could make her love me!--and with such an affectionate temper why
should I not? She wants a parent, I want a child. If I study her
happiness disinterestedly, kindly, truly, she can not help loving me;
but I will not even think of myself, I will try to study _her_ good,
_her_ well-being; and I will let the love for me come or not as it may,
and God will help me. He always does help me--when I have the courage to
dare to forget myself, and leave the issues of things to His
Providence."
Such were the dispositions upon both sides with which the two met. But
the best resolutions win no battle. They are part, and a very serious
part of every undertaking, but they are far from being all. We are so
imperfect ourselves, and we have to do with such imperfect beings, that
evils and difficulties, unexpected, are sure to arise in our
communication with others, even when both sides meet with the very best
intentions; therefore, whoever intends to carry out such good
intentions, and make a right piece of work of it, must calculate upon
these things, just as the mechanic is obliged to make a large allowance
for unavoidable obstructions in carrying out any of his theories into
action and reality--into useful, every-day working order.
In due time, a fly from the railway--one of those dirty, hired carriages
which are the disgrace of England--deposited Miss Arnold and her luggage
at the door of General Melwyn's handsome mansion of the Hazels, and in
all due form and order she was introduced into the dining-room. It was
between six and seven o'clock in the evening when she entered the very
handsomely furnished apartment, where, over a half-and-half sort of
fire--it having been rather a warm February day--sat the general and his
lady.
Lettice was tired, heated, and red with the jumbling of the railway, the
bother at the station, and the knocking about in the very uneasy
carriage in which she had come up; and she felt in that disagreeable
sort of journey disorder of toilet, which makes people feel and look so
awkward. But she put the best face upon the matter, and entering, made a
very respectful courtesy to Mrs. Melwyn, who met her, holding out her
hand; and with her face and appearance Lettice felt charmed in a moment.
Mrs. Melwyn, who did not want penetration, saw that in Lettice, spite of
present disadvantages, which she was sure she should like very much. Not
so the general. He was a perfect fool of the eye, as military men are
too apt to be. Whatever was awkward or ill-dressed, was perfectly
abhorrent to him; and he took a dislike to "the creature" the moment he
cast his eyes upon her.
* * * * *
It seemed but an unpromising beginning.
The heart of poor Lettice sunk within her in a way she was little
accustomed to, as the general, in a very pettish mood, stirred the fire,
and said. "When _are_ we to have dinner, Mrs. Melwyn? What _are_ we
waiting for? Will you never teach that cook of yours to be punctual?"
"It is not her fault, indeed," was the answer, in a low, timid voice; "I
ventured to order dinner to be put off half an hour, to suit the railway
time."
The general was too well bred to utter what he very plainly looked--that
to have been thus kept waiting for Miss Arnold he thought a very
unwarrantable proceeding indeed.
He stirred up the fire with additional vigor--made it blaze
fiercely--then complained of these abominable coals, which burned like
touchwood, and had no heat in them, and wondered whether Mrs. Melwyn
would ever have the energy to order sea-borne coal, as he had desired;
and then, casting a most ungracious look at the new comer, who stood
during this scene, feeling shocked and uncomfortable to a degree, he
asked Mrs. Melwyn "how long she intended to keep the young lady standing
there before she dressed for dinner?" and suggested that the housemaid
should be sent for, to show her to her room.
"I will take that office upon myself," said Mrs. Melwyn. "Come, Miss
Arnold, will you follow me?" And lighting a candle, for it was now dark,
she proceeded toward the door.
"For heaven's sake, don't be long!" said her husband, in an irritable
tone; "it's striking six and three quarters. _Is_ dinner to be upon the
table at seven o'clock, or is it not?"
"Punctually."
"Then, Miss--Miss--I beg your pardon--and Mrs. Melwyn, I _hope_ you will
be ready to take your usual place at table."
They heard no more; for Mrs. Melwyn closed the door, with the air of one
escaping--and, looking uncomfortable and half frightened, led the way
up-stairs.
It was a pretty, cheerful little room, of which she opened the door; and
a pleasant fire was blazing in the grate. The bed was of white dimity,
trimmed with a border of colored chintz, as were the window-curtains;
the carpet quite new, and uncommonly pretty; chairs, dressing-table,
writing-table, all very neat and elegant; and the tables comfortably
covered each with its proper appendages.
It was quite a pretty little den.
Mrs. Melwyn had taken much pleasure in the fitting up of this small
room, which was next to her own dressing-room. She had fancied herself
going to receive into it a second Catherine: and though the very
moderate amount of money of which she had the power of disposing as she
pleased, and the noisy remonstrances and objections of Randall, had
prevented her indulging in many petty fancies which would have amused
and occupied her pleasantly since the dismal day of Catherine's wedding,
still she had persisted, contrary to her wont, in having in some degree
her own way. So, in spite of all Randall could do, she had discarded the
ugly old things--which the lady's maid, excessively jealous of this new
comer, declared were more than too good for such as her--and had
substituted this cheerful simplicity; and the air of freshness and
newness cast over every thing rendered it particularly pleasing.
"What a beautiful little room!" Lettice could not help exclaiming,
looking excessively delighted. She liked pretty things, and elegant
little comforts as well as any body, did Lettice, though they seldom
fell to her share, because she was always for giving them up to other
people.
"Do you like it, my dear?" said Mrs. Melwyn, in what Lettice thought the
sweetest, softest voice she had ever heard. "I have taken great pleasure
in getting it ready for you; I shall be glad, indeed, if you can make
yourself happy in it."
"Happy! Who could help being happy in such a paradise?" "And with such a
sweet, gentle, charming person as Mrs. Melwyn," mentally added Lettice.
"What matters it how cross the poor old general is," thought she.
"But, my dear, I don't see your trunks. Will you ring the bell for them?
The general must not be kept waiting for his dinner, and he can not
endure those who sit down at his table, either to be too late, or not to
be in an evening dress. Military men, you know, are so used to this sort
of precision, that they expect it from all around them. You will
remember another day, my dear, and--" then the under housemaid opened
the door. "Tell them to bring up Miss Arnold's trunks directly."
_Them._
She did not at that moment exactly know which was the proper servant
whose office it ought to be to carry Miss Arnold's trunks. Miss Arnold
was an anomaly. There was no precedent. Not a servant in this family
would stir without a precedent. The trunk was probably too heavy for the
under-housemaid to carry up--that under-housemaid, one of the fags of an
establishment like this, kept merely to do what the upper-servants are
too fine to do. In households like the one before us, you must have two
in every department--there is a chance, then, if you want any thing
done, you may get it done. The under-servant is always, as I said, a
sort of fag or slave in the eyes of the upper ones. They will _allow_
her to make herself useful, though it should not be exactly _her place_.
Mrs. Melwyn had provided for the attendance upon Miss Arnold by having
recourse to this said under-housemaid, and adding a couple of sovereigns
to her wages unknown to Randall, but she had forgotten the carrying up
of her trunk. Had it been Catherine, this would have been done as a
matter of course by the two footmen, and she had a sort of faint hope
they would do it of course now. But, she did not like to ask such a
thing, so she said "_them_;" hoping somebody would answer to it some way
or other, but--
"Who?" asked Bridget bringing the matter to a point.
"Why, I am sure I don't exactly know. Who is there below? I suppose you
could not carry them up yourself, Bridget?"
"I am afraid not, ma'am; there's only one trunk, and it looks heavy."
"Oh!" cried Lettice, "I can come and help you. We can carry it up
together, for Myra and I carried it down together." And she was quitting
the room. But Mrs. Melwyn laid her hand upon her shoulder.
"No, my dear, upon no account; Bridget, fetch up the gardener's boy,
he'll help you to carry the trunk up."
Mrs. Melwyn looked excessively annoyed and distressed: Lettice could not
imagine what could be the matter.
The gentle, kind lady seemed nervous and embarrassed. At last, evidently
making a very great effort with herself, she got out, "Excuse me, my
dear, but there is a little thing.... I would rather not, if you please
... servants are so insolent, you know they are ill brought up; if you
please, my dear, it will be better _not_ to offer to do things for
yourself, which young ladies don't usually undertake to do; such as
carrying up trunks. And then, I think, it will be better not to allude
to past circumstances, servants are apt to have such a contempt for
people that have not been very rich. It's very strange and wrong, but so
it is. You will be more comfortable, I think, if you maintain your own
dignity. I hope you will not be hurt at me for giving you this little
hint, Miss Arnold."
"Hurt! Oh, madam!" And Lettice could not forbear taking up the beautiful
white hand of this most fair and delicate woman, and kissing it with the
most respectful reverence. "Whatever you will be so very kind as to
suggest to me I will so carefully attend to, and I shall be so much
obliged to you."
How sweet was this gentle manner to poor Mrs. Melwyn! She began to feel
lightened from quite a load of anxiety. She began to believe, that
happen what would, she should never be _afraid_ of Lettice. "Catherine
was quite right; oh, what a comfort it would be!"
"Well then," she continued, with more cheerfulness, "I will go away and
see that your things are sent up to you, for there is no time to be
lost. Bless me! it's striking seven. You never _can_ be ready. Oh! here
it comes! I forgot to tell you that Bridget is to answer your bell and
wait upon you. I have settled all that--you will find her quite good
natured and attentive; she's really an obliging girl."
And so she was. The upper housemaid took care to preserve strict
discipline, and exact prompt obedience in her own department, whatever
the mistress of the mansion might do in hers.
"Well, then, I will leave you and make your excuses to the general, and
you will follow me to the dining-room as soon as you can. We must not
keep dinner waiting any longer. You will excuse that ceremony, I am
sure. The general is an invalid, you know, and these matters are
important to his health."
And so saying, she glided away, leaving Lettice almost too much
astonished to be delighted with all this consideration and
kindness--things to which she had been little accustomed. But the
impression she received, upon the whole, was very sweet. The face and
manner of Mrs. Melwyn were so excessively soft; her very dress, the
color of her hair, her step, her voice; every thing spoke so much
gentleness. Lettice thought her the loveliest being she had ever met
with. More charming even than Catherine--more attaching even than Mrs.
Danvers. She felt very much inclined to adore her.
She was but a very few hours longer in the house before pity added to
this rising feeling of attachment; and I believe there is nothing
attachés the inferior to the superior like pity.
Dressed in one of her best new dresses, and with her hair done up as
neatly as she possibly could in that hurry, Lettice made her way to the
dining-room.
It was a large, lofty, very handsome, and rather awfully _resounding_
room, with old family pictures upon every side. There was a sideboard
set out sparkling with glass and plate; a small table in the middle of
the apartment with silver covers and dishes shining in the light of four
wax candles; a blazing fire, a splendid Indian screen before the door;
two footmen in liveries of pink and white, and a gentleman in a black
suit, waiting. The general and Mrs. Melwyn were seated opposite to each
other at table.
The soup had been already discussed, and the first course was set upon
the table when Miss Arnold entered.
Had she been a young lady born, an obsequious footman would have been
ready to attend her to her seat, and present her with a chair: as it
was, she would have been spared this piece of etiquette, and she was
making her way to her chair without missing the attention, when the
general, who observed his saucy footmen standing lounging about, without
offering to move forward, frowned in what Lettice thought a most
alarming way, and said in a stern voice, and significant manner, "What
are you about?" to the two footmen. This piece of attention was bestowed
upon her to her surprise and to Mrs. Melwyn's great satisfaction.
"We thought you would excuse us. The soup has been set aside for you,"
said the lady of the house.
"Oh, thank you, ma'am, pray don't trouble yourself."
"Give Miss Arnold soup."
Again in a stern, authoritative voice from the General. Mrs. Melwyn was
used to the sternness, and most agreeably surprised at the politeness,
and quite grateful for it. Lettice thought the voice and look too
terrible to take pleasure in any thing connected with it.
She had no need to feel gratitude either--it was not done out of
consideration for her. The general, who, with the exception of Randall,
kept, as far as he was concerned, every servant in the utmost
subservience, did not choose that any one who had the honor of a seat at
his table should be neglected by those "rascals," as he usually styled
his footmen.
* * * * *
It being the first evening, Mrs. Melwyn had too much politeness to
require Miss Arnold to enter upon those after-dinner duties, the
performance of which had been expressly stipulated for by Catherine;
stipulated for, not only with Lettice, but with the general himself.
She has made her father promise that he would suffer this young lady to
undertake the place of reader--which Catherine had herself filled for
some time, to the inexpressible relief of her mother--and that Miss
Arnold should be permitted to try whether she could play well enough at
backgammon to make an adversary worth vanquishing.
He had grumbled and objected, as a matter of course, to this
arrangement, but had finally consented. However, he was not particularly
impatient to begin; and besides, he was habitually a well-bred man, so
that any duty which came under his category of good manners he
punctually performed. People are too apt to misprize this sort of
politeness of mere habit; yet, as far as it goes, it is an excellent
thing. It enhances the value of a really kind temper in all the domestic
relations, to an incalculable degree--a degree little appreciated by
some worthy people, who think roughness a proof of sincerity, and that
rudeness marks the honest truth of their affections. And where there is
little kindness of nature, and a great deal of selfishness and
ill-tempered indulgence, as in this cross, old man before us, still the
habit of politeness was not without avail; it kept him in a certain
check, and certainly rendered him more tolerable. He was not quite such
a brute bear as he would have been, left to his uncorrected nature.
Politeness is, and ought to be, a habit so confirmed, that we exercise
it instinctively--without consideration, without attention, without
effort, as it were; this is the very essence of the sort of politeness I
am thinking of. It takes it out of the category of the virtues, it is
true, but it places it in that of the qualities; and, in some matters,
good qualities are almost as valuable, almost more valuable, than if
they still continued among the virtues--and this of politeness, in my
opinion, is one.
By virtues, I mean acts which are performed with a certain difficulty,
under the sense of responsibility to duty, under the self-discipline of
right principle; by qualities, I mean what is spontaneous.
Constitutional good qualities are spontaneous. Such as natural sweetness
of temper--natural delicacy of feeling--natural intrepidity; others are
the result of habit, and end by being spontaneous--by being a second
nature: justly are habits called so. Gentleness of tone and
manner--attention to conventional proprieties--to people's little wants
and feelings--are of these. This same politeness being a sort of summary
of such, I will end this little didactic digression by advising all
those who have the rearing of the young in their hands, carefully to
form them in matters of this description, so that they shall attain
_habits_--so that the delicacy of their perceptions, the gentleness of
their tones and gestures, the propriety of their dress, the politeness
of their manners, shall become spontaneous acts, done without reference
to self, as things of course. By which means, not only much that is
disagreeable to their is avoided, and much that is amiable attained,
but a great deal of reference to self is in after life escaped; and
temptations to the faults of vanity--pride--envious comparisons with our
neighbors, and the feebleness of self-distrust very considerably
diminished.
And so, to return, the politeness of the general and Mrs. Melwyn led to
this result, the leaving Miss Arnold undisturbed to make her reflections
and her observations, before commencing the task which Mrs. Melwyn, for
the last time, undertook for her, of reading the newspaper and playing
the hit.
Lettice could not help feeling rejoiced to be spared this sort of public
exhibition of her powers, till she was in a slight degree better
acquainted with her ground; and she was glad to know, without being
directly told, what it was customary to do in these respects. But in
every other point of view, she had better, perhaps, have been reader
than listener. For, if she gained a lesson as to the routine to be
followed, she paid for it by receiving at the same time, a considerably
alarming impression of the general's ways of proceeding.
"Shall I read the newspaper this evening?" began Mrs. Melwyn, timidly.
"I don't care if you do," roughly.
Polite men, be it observed, _en passant_, do not at all make it a rule
to exercise that habit to their wives. The wife is a thing apart from
the rest of the world, out of the category of such proprieties. To be
rude to his wife is no impeachment of a man's gentleman-like manners at
all.
"Is there any thing worth reading in it?"
"I am sure I don't know what you will think worth reading. Shall I begin
with the leading article?"
"What is it all about?"
"I am sure I can't say."
"Can't you look?"
"The sugar question, I think."
"Well, what has the fool to say about that?"
"The speech of Lord **** last night upon the much discussed subject of
the sugar question, has no doubt been read and commented upon, in their
various ways, and according to their different impressions--shall we say
prejudices?--by our readers. The performance, it is upon all hands
agreed, was masterly, and, as far as eloquence is concerned, that the
accomplished statesman who uttered this remarkable speech did only
justice to..."
"Well--well--well--_well_," in a sneering tone--"I really do wonder how
long you could go on droning and dinning, and dinning and droning such
palpably empty editorial nonsense as that into a man's ears. Now, I
would be glad to ask you--merely to ask you, as a rational woman, Mrs.
Melwyn--what possible amusement or profit can be drawn from a long
exordium which says absolutely nothing--tells one absolutely nothing but
what every one knew before--stuff with which all editors of newspapers
seem to think it necessary to preface their remarks. What in the name
of--is the use of wasting your breath and my patience--can't you skip?
Are you a mere reading machine, madam?"
"Shall I pass on to the next subject?"
"No, that's not my meaning--if you could take a meaning. What I want is
only what every rational person expects when these confounded
lucubrations of a stupid newspaper editor are read up--that the reader
will have the sense to leave all these useless phrases and useless
syllables out, and give the pith and marrow to the listener. Well--well,
never mind--if you can't, you can't: get on, at all events."
Mrs. Melwyn colored faintly, looked nervous and uneasy--glanced down the
columns of the newspaper, and hesitated.
"Well--can't you go on? What's the use of sitting there looking like a
child of six years old, who's afraid of being whipped? If you can't, you
can't--if you haven't the sense you haven't, but for ---- sake get on."
"'Mr. **** rose, and in a manner upon which we can not exactly bestow
our approbation, but which, nevertheless, seemed to us in an
unaccountable manner to obtain the ear and the attention of a very
crowded house, &c., &c.'"
"There you are again! why the deuce can't you pass over all that, and
tell us what the confounded blockheads on that side did really say?"
"I read this debate to you yesterday, you know. These are only the
editor's remarks upon it. Shall I give you the summary of last night's
debate?"
"No, let's hear what the fool says upon this cursed sugar question. He's
against the measure, that's one comfort."
"He does not seem to be so exactly," glancing down the page.
"I'll take the liberty of judging that matter myself, Mrs. Melwyn, if
you'll only be so particularly obliging as to read on."
Which she did. Now reproached for reading in such a low, cluttering
manner, with that d----d soft voice of hers, that it was impossible to
hear; and when she raised it, asked, "What the deuce was the use of
shouting so as to be heard by the fellows in the servants' hall?"
In this style the newspaper was at last, for better for worse, blundered
through, in the most uncomfortable manner possible, by the terrified
reader.
Lettice sat by, deeply attentive. She was a brave, high-spirited girl,
and she did not feel dismayed; her predominant sentiment was
self-congratulation that she should be able to spare that sweet, soft,
kind Mrs. Melwyn the ungrateful task.
She sat observing, and laying down her own plans of proceeding. It was
not the first time in her life she had been exposed to what is called
scolding; a thing every day, I verily believe--and am most happy to do
so--going more and more out of fashion, though still retained, as a
_habit_, by many people otherwise well-meaning enough. It was retained
in its full vigor by the general, who was not well-meaning at all; he
usually meant nothing on earth by what he did, but the indulgence of the
present humor, good, bad, or indifferent. Lettice had lived in a sphere
of life where this sort of domestic violence used to be very common; and
she had learned to bear it, even from the lips of those she loved, with
patience. She knew this very well, and she thought to herself, "if I
could get into the habit of hardly caring for it from those very near
and dear to me, surely it will be easy enough to meet it with
indifference from a poor, cross, peevish, suffering old man, whom I
don't care for in the least. The way must be, to get into the habit of
it from the first, to let the words
"Pass by me as the idle wind which I regard not."
I must put all my vanity, all my spirit, all my own little tempers,
quietly out of the way; and never trouble myself with what he says, but
go reading on in the best way I can, to please him, but with the most
unruffled outward appearance of tranquillity; and the utmost secret
indifference as to whether I succeed or not. He shall be sooner tired of
scolding, than I of looking as if I never heard it. He'll give over if I
can persevere, instead of looking all colors and all ways, as that dear,
gentle Mrs. Melwyn does."
The trial at backgammon was, if such a thing could be, worse. It seemed
as if it was impossible to give satisfaction here. The general not only
played his own game, but insisted upon playing that of his adversary;
and was by turns angry at her stupidity in missing an advantage through
want of skill, asking, "What could be the possible interest or pleasure
of playing with such a mere child?" and vexed, if the plan he pointed
out ended in his own discomfiture, for he could not bear to lose.
Backgammon, too, was an unlucky game to be played with one of a temper
such as his. Every favorable throw of the dice, it is true, filled him
with a disagreeable sarcastic exultation; but a positively bad one, and
still more, a succession of bad ones, drove him furious. After a long
course of provoking throws, such as sometimes happen, he would seem half
mad, storm, curse, and swear, in the most ridiculous, if it had not been
blasphemous, manner; and sometimes end by banging the tables together,
and vowing he would never play at this confounded game again as long as
he lived.
There was an exhibition of this sort that very evening. Mrs. Melwyn
looked much distressed, and almost ashamed, as she glanced at Lettice to
see how she took it; but Lettice appeared to be too much engaged with a
knot in her netting to seem to take it at all, which evidently relieved
Mrs. Melwyn. The scene had not, however, been lost upon our friend, who
had observed it with a smile of secret contempt.
Mentally, however, congratulating herself upon her good, robust nerves;
such things, she well knew, being perilous to those cursed with
delicacy of that sort. The best endeavors, the best intentions, would
be without avail in such cases, such sufferers would find their powers
of endurance destroyed by these successive acts of violence, till it
would be impossible to meet them tolerably. Again she looked at Mrs.
Melwyn, and with great pity. Again she rejoiced in the idea of saving
her from what she perceived was indeed, to such a frame and temper as
hers, a source of very great suffering; and again she resolved to keep
up her own spirits, and maintain the only true defense, courage and
indifference. She felt sure, if she could only, by a little effort, do
this for a short time, the effort would terminate in a habit; after
which it would cost her little or nothing more.
The general, though polite to Lettice in their first communications,
held her in far too little esteem to care one doit what he did or said
before her. He was an excessively proud man; and the idea that a girl,
so greatly his inferior in every way, should keep him in check, or
venture even to make a remark upon him, far less presume to judge his
conduct, never entered his head. I wonder what he would have felt, if he
could have been made aware of that secret smile.
Now a tray with wine, spirits, and water, was introduced. The general
took his accustomed glass of whisky and water, then opened his
cigar-box, and began to smoke. This process invariably made Mrs. Melwyn
feel rather sick, and she rose this evening to go away; but being asked
what she was moving for, she resumed her seat, and sat till two cigars
had been smoked, and the clock told half-past ten; when, as the general
loved early hours, she was suffered to take her departure.
The servant entered with lighted candles. Mrs. Melwyn took one, and bade
him give Miss Arnold another; and they went up stairs together.
"Good night, my dear," said the lady of the house, with a wearied, worn
air, and a tone in which there was a good deal of sadness.
She never could get used to these scenes, poor thing; every time the
general was cross she felt it acutely; he had grown dreadfully cross
since Catherine married. Mrs. Melwyn hardly knew what to do with him, or
how to bear it.
"Good night, my dear, I hope you will sleep comfortably."
"Can I be of any further use to you, madam, to-night."
"Oh, no, thank you; don't come into my dressing-room--Randall is very
particular: she considers _that_ her own territory. She does not like
any one to come in, especially at night; but just let me look whether
your fire burns," she added, entering Lettice's room.
The fire was blazing merrily; Mrs. Melwyn put her candle down upon the
chimney-piece, and stood there a little while before it, looking again
irresolute. It seemed as if she wished, and did not know how, to say
something. Lettice stood at a short distance, respectfully expectant.
"I declare it's very cold to-night," with a little shiver.
"I did not feel it cold, but then this is so thoroughly comfortable a
house."
"Do you think so? Shall you find it so? The wind comes sharply down the
passages sometimes, but I wish, I hope, you won't care much for that ...
or ... or ... or ... any little painful things; they can't be helped,
you know, in this world."
"Ah, madam! if I may venture to say so, there is one good thing one gets
out of great hardships--little things do seem so _very_ little
afterward."
"Ay, if they are really little, but--"
"Things that are ... that don't seem little to people of more gentle
nurture, who have lived in a different way, seem, and are, little to
those who have roughed it till they are themselves roughened. That was
what I intended to say. One is so very happy to escape dreadful, real,
positive distress, that all the rest is like mere play."
Mrs. Melwyn looked at her in a pensive, anxious, inquiring manner. She
wanted to see if she was understood; she saw that she was. She saw
something truly heartening and encouraging in the young girl's
countenance. She shook hands with her and bade her good night very
affectionately, and went to her own dressing-room.
Randall was as cross that night as it was possible for the most
tyrannical servant to be, but some way or other, Mrs. Melwyn did not
feel as if she cared for it _quite_ so much as usual; she had her mind
filled with the image of Lettice. Something so very nice about her--she
thought to herself--in one respect even better than Catherine. She
should not be so afraid of her being distressed by disagreeable things;
she should venture to tell her about Randall, and other vexations which
she had carefully concealed from Catherine, lest they should make her
unhappy. Thus she represented it to herself: the truth was, lest
Catherine should make a point of Randall being parted with, an effort
she knew herself quite incompetent to make.
She should be able to complain of Randall, without feeling that she
should be urged to conquer her weakness, and part with her. There was
something very comfortable in this; so Randall pouted away, and Mrs.
Melwyn heeded it not very much, not nearly so much as usual; and when
Randall perceived this, she was excessively offended, and more and more
cross and disagreeable. She had quite quickness enough to perceive how
much her despotism must be weakened by the rule being thus divided, and
she saw even so early something of the effects she deprecated. The
observation, however, did not tend to soften her or to render her more
obliging, it was not the least in her plan to contend with the new comer
in this way; she meant to meet her, and her mistress, with open
defiance, and bear both down by main force.
CHAPTER VI.
"Cowards die many times before their death."
SHAKSPEARE.
The courage of Lettice, as I have told you, was strong, and her nerves
good, but in spite of this, assisted by the best resolutions in the
world, she _did_ find it a hard matter to stand the general. She was
very hopeful the first day or two--the habitual politeness, of which I
have spoken, came in aid. It exercised a sort of instinctive and
involuntary check upon the old man's rude intemperance of language when
irritated. Lettice did her very best to read the newspaper to his
satisfaction; skipping every unnecessary word, just as Catherine had
been accustomed to do, without hurting the sense in the least; and
getting over the ground with all the rapidity the old veteran desired.
This was a plan poor Mrs. Melwyn was far too nervous to adopt. If she
missed a word it was sure to be the wrong one to miss--one necessary to,
instead of encumbering the meaning. It was quite indispensable that she
should read simply and straightforwardly what was put before her, or she
was certain to get into confusion, and have herself scolded. Even the
dreaded and dreadful backgammon did tolerably well, while the general's
politeness to the stranger lasted. Lettice was surprised herself, to
find how easily the task, which had appeared so awful, was discharged;
but she had not long to congratulate herself. Gradually, at first by
slow degrees, but afterward like the accelerated descent of a stone down
the hill, acquired habit gave way to constitutional ill-humor. Alas,
they tell us nature expelled with a pitchfork will make her way back
again; most true of the unregenerated nature--most true of the poor
blind heathen--or the poor untutored Christian, to all intents and
purposes a heathen--too true even of those assisted by better
considerations, higher principles, and higher aids.
First it was a little low grumbling; then a few impatient gestures; then
a few impatient words--words became sentences; sentences of
invective--soon it was with her, just as it had been with others. This
graduated progression assisted, however, gradually to harden and prepare
her. She was resolved not to look frightened, though her very knees
would knock together at times. She was determined never to allow herself
to feel provoked or hurt, or ill-used, let the general be ever so rude;
and to soften her heart by any such ideas she never allowed herself.
Steadily she kept in mind that he was a suffering, ill-disciplined,
irritable old man; and by keeping these considerations in view, she
actually achieved the most difficult--almost heroic effort. She managed
to attain a frame of mind in which she could pity his sufferings, feel
indulgence for his faults, and remain quite placid under their effects
as regarded herself.
This conduct before a very long time had elapsed produced an effect far
more agreeable than she had ever ventured to anticipate.
The general began to like her.
Like many other cross people, he was excessively difficult to be pleased
in one article--the way people took his scoldings. He was offended if
they were received with cheerfulness--in the way Edgar had tried to
laugh them off--he was still more vexed if people seemed hurt or
suffering under them: if they cried, it was bad, indeed. Like many
others not absolutely wicked and cruel, though he could not control his
temper, he really did feel vexed at seeing the pain he had produced. His
conscience would cry out a little at such times. Now, nothing made him
so uncomfortable and irritable, as having a quarrel with his conscience;
a thing that did not very often happen, to be sure--the said conscience
being in his case not a very watchful guardian, but it was all the more
disagreeable when it spoke. The genuine good temper and habitual
self-possession--the calmness without disrespect--the cheerfulness
without carelessness--the respectful attention stripped of all meanness
or subservience which Lettice managed to preserve in her relations with
him--at last made its way quite to his heart, that is to say, to his
taste or fancy, for I don't think he had much of a heart. He began to
grow quite fond of her, and one day delighted, as much as he surprised
Mrs. Melwyn, by saying, that Miss Arnold really was a very pretty sort
of young woman, and he thought suited them very well. And so the grand
difficulty of managing with the general's faults was got over, but there
remained Mrs. Melwyn's and the servants'.
Lettice had never laid her account at finding any faults in Mrs. Melwyn.
That lady from the first moment she beheld her, had quite won her heart.
Her elegance of appearance, the Jove-like softness of her countenance,
the gentle sweetness of her voice, all conspired to make the most
charming impression. Could there lie any thing under that sweet outside,
but the gentlest and most indulgent of temper?
No, she was right there, nothing could be more gentle, more indulgent
than was Mrs. Melwyn's temper; and Lettice had seen so much of the
rough, the harsh, the captious, and the unamiable during her life, that
grant her the existence of those two qualities, and she could scarcely
desire any thing more. She had yet to learn what are the evils which
attend the timid and the weak.
She had yet to know that there may be much concealed self-indulgence,
where there is a most yielding disposition; and that they who are too
cowardly to resist wrong and violence courageously, from a weak and
culpable indulgence of their own shyness and timidity, will afford a
poor defense to those they ought to protect, and expose them to
innumerable evils.
Lettice had managed to become easy with the general; she could have been
perfectly happy with Mrs. Melwyn, but nothing could get over the
difficulties with the servants. Conscious of the misrule they exercised;
jealous of the newcomer--who soon showed herself to be a clever and
spirited girl--a sort of league was immediately instituted among them;
its declared object being either to break her spirit, or get rid of her
out of the house. The persecutions she endured; the daily minute
troubles and vexations; the difficulties cast in her path by these
dangerous yet contemptible foes, it would be endless to describe.
Whatever she wanted she could not get done. Even Bridget, under the
influence of the upper-housemaid, proved a broken reed to lean upon. Her
fire would never be lighted; nor her room done at the proper time; and
when she came down with red hands, purple cheeks, and, worst of all, a
red nose, looking this cold spring the very picture of chill and misery,
the general would look cross, and Mrs. Melwyn not pleased, and would
wonder, "How she could get so starved, and why she did not make them
light her fire."
She could make no reply but that she would ask Bridget to be more
punctual.
It was worse, when do what she would--ring as she would--nobody would
come to fasten her dress for dinner till the last bell was sounding, and
when it was impossible for her to pay all those nice attentions to her
appearance which the general's critical eye demanded. Though he said
nothing he would upon such occasions look as if he thought her a sloven;
and Mrs. Melwyn, on her side, seemed excessively fretted and uneasy,
that her favorite would do herself so little justice, and run the risk
of forfeiting the general's favor; and this last piece of injustice,
Lettice did feel it hard to bear.
It was the same in all the other minutiæ of domestic life. Every
trifling circumstance, like a midge's sting, though insignificant in
itself, was rendered in the sum total most troublesome.
If they were going out walking, Miss Arnold's shoes were never cleaned.
She provided herself with several pairs, that one at least might always
be ready, and she not keep the general and Mrs. Melwyn waiting. It was
of no use. The shoes were never ready. If there were several pairs, they
were lost, or odd shoes brought up.
She did not care for labor. She had no foolish pride about serving
herself, she had been used to that sort of thing; she had not the
slightest wish on earth to be a fine lady; but that was forbidden. It
was one of the things Mrs. Melwyn had made a point of, and continued to
make a point of; but then, why did she not take care she should be
better served?
She, the mistress in her own house! Was it indifference to her guest's
comforts? No, her unremitting personal kindness forbade that idea. What
was it then, that left her helpless guest thus exposed to want and
insult? Yes, _want!_ I may use the word; for in her new sphere of
action, the things she required were absolute necessaries. The want in
its way was as great as she had ever known. Yes, insult--for every
little negligence was felt as an insult--Lettice knew too well that as
an insult it was intended. What made this kind Mrs. Melwyn permit such
things? Weakness, nothing but weakness--culpable weakness--horror of
that which would give her feeble spirit pain.
Lettice found it extremely difficult to be candid in this instance. She
who had never experienced what this weakness of the spirit was, found it
almost impossible to be indulgent to it. She felt quite vexed and sore.
But when she looked so, poor Mrs. Melwyn would put on such a sad,
anxious, weary face, that it was impossible not to feel concerned for
her, and to forgive her at once. And so this good, generous,
kind-hearted being's temper achieved another victory. She was able to
love Mrs. Melwyn in spite of all her weakness, and the evils she in
consequence suffered; and this indulgent affection made every thing
easy.
There were times, however, when she found it almost too difficult to get
on; but upon one occasion after another occurring of this nature, and
still more when she discovered that Mrs. Melwyn was a yet greater
sufferer from this servile tyranny than herself, she at last determined
to speak out, and see whether things could not be established upon a
more reasonable and proper footing.
There was one day a terrible quarrel with Randall. It happened that
Randall was from home, drinking tea with a friend. She had either bound
up the general's ailing arm too tight, or the arm had swelled; however,
for some reason or other the injured part became extremely painful. The
general fidgeted and swore, but bore it for some time with the sort of
resolute determination, with which, to do him justice, he was accustomed
to meet pain. At last the aching became so intolerable that it was
scarcely to be endured; and after ringing twenty times to inquire
whether Randall was come home, and uttering a heavy imprecation each
time he was answered in the negative; what between pain and impatience
he became so fevered that he really seemed quite ill, and his sufferings
were evidently more than he could well endure. Poor Mrs. Melwyn,
helpless and feeble, dared not propose to do any thing for him, though
she suffered--soft, kind creature that she was--almost more in
witnessing his distress than he did in the midst of it. At last Lettice
ventured to say, that she thought it a great pity the general should
continue to suffer this agony, which she felt assured must be positively
dangerous, and modestly ventured to suggest that she should be allowed
to undo the bandage and relieve the pressure.
"Dear me," said Mrs. Melwyn, in a harried, frightened way, "could you
venture? Suppose you should do mischief; better wait, perhaps."
"Easily said, ma'am," cried the general. "It's not your arm that's
aching as if it would drop from your body, that's plain. What's that
you're saying, Miss Arnold?"
"If you could trust me to do it, I was saying; if you would give me
leave, I would undo the bandage and endeavor to make it more
comfortable. I am afraid that this pain and tight binding may bring on
positive inflammation. I really should not be afraid to try; I have seen
Mrs. Randall do it hundreds of times. There is no difficulty in it."
"Dear Lettice, how you talk!" said Mrs. Melwyn, as if she were afraid
Randall was behind the door. "No difficulty! How could Randall bear to
hear you say so?"
"I don't know, ma'am; perhaps she would contradict me. But I think at
all events there is no difficulty that I could not manage."
"Well, then, for Heaven's sake, try, child!" cried the general; "for
really the pain is as if all the dogs in Hockley were gnawing at it.
Come along; do something, for the love of--"
He suffered Lettice to help him off with his coat, and to undo the
bandage, which she accomplished very handily; and then observed that
Mrs. Randall, in her haste to depart upon her visit, had bound up the
wound in a most careless manner; and the irritation had already produced
so serious an inflammation that she was quite alarmed, and suggested
that the doctor should be sent for.
The general swore at the idea of the doctor, and yet more violently at
that old hag Randall's confounded carelessness. Mrs. Melwyn looked
miserable; she saw the case was bad, and yet she knew that to send for
the doctor, and take it out of Randall's hands, would be an insult never
to be forgiven.
But Lettice was steady. She was not quite ignorant in these matters, and
she felt it her duty to be firm. She expostulated and remonstrated, and
was just carrying her point when Mrs. Randall came home; and, having
heard below how things were going on, hurried, uncalled for, into the
dining-room.
She came in in a mighty pucker, as she would herself have called it, and
began asking who had dared to open the wound and expose it to the air:
and, seeing Miss Arnold preparing to apply a bread-and-water poultice,
which she had made, fell into such a passion of rage and jealousy that
she forgot herself so far as to snatch it from Lettice's hand, vowing,
if any body was to be allowed to meddle with _her_ arm, she would never
touch it again so long as she lived.
Mrs. Melwyn turned pale, and began in her softest way,
"Now, really, Randall. Don't be angry, Randall--do listen, Randall. The
bandage was too tight; I assure you, it was. We should not have thought
of touching it else."
"What the devil, Randall, are you about to do now?" cried the general,
as she took possession of the arm, in no gentle fashion.
"Bind it up again, to be sure, and keep that air out of it."
"But you hurt me confoundedly. Ah! it's more than I can bear. Don't
touch it--it's as if it were on fire!"
"But it must be bound up, I say," going on without the least regard to
the torture she was evidently putting him to.
But Lettice interfered.
"Indeed, Mrs. Randall," she said, "I do not think that you seem to be
aware of the state of inflammation that the arm is in. I assure you, you
had better apply the bread-and-water poultice, and send for Mr. Lysons."
"You assure _me_. Much you know about the matter, I should fancy."
"I think I know this much. Dear Mrs. Melwyn! Dear general! It is more
serious than you think. Pray, let me write for Mr. Lysons!"
"I do believe she's right, Randall, for the infernal torture you put me
to is more than I can bear. Ach! Let it go, will you? Undo it! Undo it!"
But Mrs. Randall, unrelentingly, bound on.
"Have done, I say! Undo it! Will nobody undo it? Lettice Arnold, for
Heaven's sake!" His face was bathed with the sweat of agony.
Randall persisted; Mrs. Melwyn stood pale, helpless, and aghast; but
Lettice hastened forward, scissors in hand, cut the bandage, and
liberated the tortured arm in a minute.
Mrs. Randall was in an awful rage. She forgot herself entirely; she had
often forgotten herself before; but there was something in this, being
done in the presence of a third person, of one so right-minded and
spirited as Lettice, which made both the general and his wife view it in
a new light. A sort of vail seemed to fall from before their eyes; and
for the first time, they both seemed--and simultaneously--aware of the
impropriety and the degradation of submitting to it.
"Randall! Randall!" remonstrated Mrs. Melwyn, still very gently,
however; but it was a great step to remonstrate at all--but Randall was
abusing Lettice most violently, and her master and mistress into the
bargain, for being governed by such as _her_! "Randall! Randall!
Don't--you forget yourself!"
But the general, who had been silent a second or two, at last broke
forth, and roared,
"Have done with your infernal noise! won't you, you beldam! Here,
Lettice, give me the poultice; put it on, and then write for Lysons,
will you?"
In matters such as this, the first step is every thing. Mrs. Melwyn and
her fiery partner had both been passive as a poor bewitched hen, we are
told, is with a straw over her neck. Once shift her position and the
incubus is gone.
The arrival of Mr. Lysons completed the victory. Mortification was upon
the eve of setting in. The relief from the bandage, and the emollient
poultice applied by Lettice, had in all probability saved the general's
life.
Little Mrs. Randall cared for this demonstration of her mistaken
treatment; she had been too long accustomed to triumph, to yield the
field undisputed to a rival. She took refuge in sulky silence, and when
Mr. Lysons was gone, desired to speak with Mrs. Melwyn.
The usual harangue was made. "As she could no longer give
satisfaction--would Mrs. Melwyn please to provide herself in a month."
The blood run cold to Mrs. Melwyn's heart. What! Randall! Impossible!
What should she do! What would the general do? What would become of the
servants? Who would look after them? What could be done without the
faithful Randall?
"Oh, Randall! you don't think of leaving me," she began.
I am not going to repeat the dialogue, which was much the same as that
which usually ensues when the mistress entreats the maid to stay, thus
putting herself into an irremediably false position. The result of such
entreaties was the usual one. Randall, assured of victory, took the
matter with a high hand, and, most luckily for all parties, refused to
be mollified.
Then poor Mrs. Melwyn, in dismay and despair, returned to the
drawing-room. She looked quite ill; she dared not tell the general what
had happened--positively dared not. She resolved to make one other
appeal to Randall first; to bribe her, as she had often done before, to
bribe high--higher than ever. Any thing, rather than part with her.
But she was so nervous, so restless, so miserable, that Lettice observed
it with much compassion, and came and sat by her, which was her way of
comforting her friend when she saw she wanted comfort. Mrs. Melwyn took
her hand, and held it between both hers, and looked as if she greatly
wanted comfort, indeed.
The general, soon after this, rose to go to bed. It was earlier than his
usual hour, for he was quite worn out with what he had suffered.
So he left the two ladies sitting over the fire, and then Mrs. Melwyn at
last opened her heart, and disclosed to her friend the dismal
tidings--the cause of her present misery--and related in detail the
dreadful occurrence of Randall's resignation.
It was time, Lettice thought, to speak out, and she determined to
venture upon it. She had long anxiously desired to emancipate the woman
she loved with all the intensity of a child, from the fearful yoke under
which she suffered: to dissolve the pernicious enchantment which
surrounded her. She spoke, and she did so with so much gentleness,
reason, firmness, good-nature; that Mrs. Melwyn yielded to the blessed
influence. In short, it was that night determined that Randall's
resignation, so far as Mrs. Melwyn was concerned, should be accepted. If
that potentate chose to communicate her resolution herself to the
general, it was well, and he must decide; otherwise Lettice would take
upon herself to do this, and, unless he opposed the measure, Randall
should go.
With little difficulty Lettice persuaded Mrs. Melwyn not to ring for
Randall that night, saying that now she had resigned her position, her
mistress had better allow herself to be put to bed by her friend. This
was not a difficult task. That she should not meet Randall again was
what Mrs. Melwyn in her terror as much desired as Lettice did in her
prudence. In short, the general, under the influence of Lettice's
representations--she was beginning to gain great influence with
him--consented to part with the maid; and Lettice had the inconceivable
satisfaction of herself carrying to that personage her wages, and a
handsome gratuity, and of seeing her that very morning quit the house,
which was done with abundance of tears, and bitter lamentations over the
ingratitude of mankind.
How the house felt after she was gone, those who have been visited with
a domestic plague of this nature will understand. To those who have not,
so great a result from so apparently insignificant a cause would be
utterly unimaginable.
"And so they lived very happy ever afterward."
Well--don't stare--they really _did_.
A good genius was substituted for an evil one. Under her benign
influence it is astonishing how smoothly and merrily things went on. The
general was so comfortable that he very often forgot to be cross; Mrs.
Melwyn, content with every thing, but her power of showing her love for
Lettice--though she did this in every way she could think of.
And so I will leave this good, sensible, God-fearing girl for the
present,
"blessing and blest in all she does,"
and tell you how Myra went to Mrs. Fisher, and something about that
lady.
(_To be continued._)
[From Guizot's Discourse on the English Revolution.]
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
BY GUIZOT.
George III. had been seated on the throne sixteen years, when, at
fourteen hundred leagues from his capital, more than two millions of his
subjects broke the ties which bound them to his throne, declared their
independence, and undertook the foundation of the republic of the United
States of America. After a contest of seven years, England was brought
to recognize that independence, and to treat upon equal terms with the
new state. Since that time sixty-seven years have elapsed, and, without
any violent effort, without extraordinary events, by the mere
development of their institutions and of the prosperity which is the
natural attendant on peace, the United States have taken an honorable
place among great nations. Never was so rapid an elevation, so little
costly at its origin, nor so little troubled in its progress.
It is not merely to the absence of any powerful rival, or to the
boundless space open to their population, that the United States of
America have owed this singular good fortune. The rapidity and the
serenity of their rise to greatness are not the result of such fortunate
accidents alone, but are to be attributed in a great degree to moral
causes.
They rose into existence as a state under the banner of right and
justice. In their case, too, the revolution from which their history
dates was an act of defense. They claimed guarantees and asserted
principles which were inscribed in their charters, and which the English
parliament itself, though it now refused them to its subjects, had
formerly triumphantly claimed and asserted in the mother-country, with
far greater violence and disorder than were occasioned by their
resistance.
They did not, to speak strictly, attempt a revolution. Their enterprise
was, no doubt, great and perilous. To achieve the conquest of their
independence, they had to go through a war with a powerful enemy, and
the construction of a central government in the place of the distant
power whose yoke they threw off: but in their local institutions, and
those which regarded the daily affairs of life, they had no revolution
to make. Each of the colonies already enjoyed a free government as to
its internal affairs, and when it became a state found little change
necessary or desirable in the maxims and organization of power. There
was no ancient order of things to fear, to hate, to destroy; the
attachment to the ancient laws and manners, the affectionate reverence
for the past, were, on the contrary, the general sentiments of the
people. The colonial government under the patronage of a distant
monarchy, was easily transformed into a republican government under a
federation of states.
Of all the forms or modes of government, the republican is
unquestionably that to which the general and spontaneous assent of the
country is the most indispensable. It is possible to conceive of an
absolute monarchy founded by violence, and indeed such have existed; but
a republic forced upon a nation, popular government established contrary
to the instinct and the wishes of a people--this is a spectacle
revolting equally to common sense and to justice. The Anglo-American
colonies, in their transition, into the republic of the United States,
had no such difficulty to surmount; the Republic was the full and free
choice of the people; and in adopting that form of government they did
but accomplish the national wish, and develop instead of overturning
their existing institutions.
Nor was the perturbation greater in social than in political order.
There were no conflicts between different classes, no violent transfer
of influence from one order of men to another. Though the crown of
England had still partisans in the colonies, their attachment had
nothing to do with their position in the scale of society; indeed the
wealthy and important families were in general the most firmly resolved
on the conquest of their independence and the foundation of a new
system. Under their direction the people acted, and the event was
accomplished. And if society underwent no revolution, so neither did
men's minds. The philosophical ideas of the eighteenth century, its
moral skepticism and its religious unbelief, had no doubt penetrated
into the United States, and had obtained some circulation there; but the
minds to which they found entrance were not entirely carried away by
them; they did not take root there with their fundamental principles and
their ultimate consequences: the moral gravity and the practical good
sense of the old Puritans survived in most of the admirers of the French
philosophers in America. The mass of the population remained profoundly
Christian, as warmly attached to its creed as to its liberties.
While they rebelled against the authority of the King and the Parliament
of England, they were submissive to the will of God and the precepts of
the Gospel, and while struggling for independence, they were governed by
the same faith which had conducted their ancestors to this land, where
they laid the foundations of what was now rising into a state.
The ideas and passions which now convulse and disorganize society under
the name of democracy, have an extensive and powerful sway in the United
States, and ferment there with all the contagious errors and destructive
vices which they involve. But they have hitherto been controlled and
purified by Christianity, by the excellent political traditions, and the
strong habits of obedience to law, which, in the midst of liberty,
govern the population. Though anarchical principles are boldly
proclaimed on this vast theatre, principles of order and conservation
maintain their ground, and exercise a solid and energetic influence both
over society and over individual minds; their presence and their power
are every where felt, even in the party which especially claims the name
of democratic. They moderate its actions, and often save it, unknown to
itself, from its own intemperance. It is to these tutelary principles,
which presided over the origin of the American revolution, that it owes
it success. May Heaven grant that in the formidable struggle which they
have now to sustain on every side, they may continue to guide this
powerful people, and may be always at hand to warn them in time of the
abysses which lie so near their path!
Three great men, Cromwell, William III., and Washington, stand forth in
history as the heads and representatives of those supreme crises which
have determined the fate of two great nations. For extent and energy of
natural talents, Cromwell is perhaps the most remarkable of the three.
His mind was wonderfully prompt, firm, just, supple, and inventive, and
he possessed a vigor of character which no obstacle could daunt, no
conflict weary; he pursued his designs with an ardor as exhaustless as
his patience, whether through the slowest and most tortuous ways, or the
most abrupt and daring. He excelled equally in winning men, and in
ruling them by personal and familiar intercourse; he displayed equal
ability in leading an army or a party. He had the instinct of popularity
and the gift of authority, and he let loose factions with as much
audacity as he subdued them. But born in the midst of a revolution, and
raised to sovereign power by a succession of violent shocks, his genius
was, from first to last, essentially revolutionary; and though he was
taught by experience the necessity of order and government, he was
incapable of either respecting or practicing the moral and permanent
laws on which alone government can rest. Whether it was the fault of his
nature, or the vice of his position, he wanted regularity and calmness
in the exercise of power; had instant recourse to extreme measures, like
a man constantly in dread of mortal dangers, and, by the violence of his
remedies, perpetuated or even aggravated the evils which he sought to
cure. The establishment of a government is a work which requires a more
regular course, and one more conformable to the eternal laws of moral
order. Cromwell was able to subjugate the revolution he had so largely
contributed to make, but he did not succeed in establishing any thing in
the place of what he had destroyed.
Though less powerful than Cromwell by nature, William III., and
Washington succeeded in the undertaking in which he failed; they fixed
the destiny and founded the government of their country. Even in the
midst of a revolution they never accepted nor practiced a revolutionary
policy; they never placed themselves in that fatal situation in which a
man first uses anarchical violence as a stepping-stone to power, and
then despotic violence as a necessity entailed upon him by its
possession. They were naturally placed, or they placed themselves, in
the regular ways and under the permanent conditions of government.
William was an ambitious prince. It is puerile to believe that, up to
the moment of the appeal sent to him from London in 1688, he had been
insensible to the desire of ascending the throne of England, or ignorant
of the schemes long going on to raise him to it. William followed the
progress of these schemes step by step; he accepted no share in the
means, but he did not repel the end, and, without directly encouraging,
he protected its authors. His ambition was ennobled by the greatness and
justice of the cause to which it was attached--the cause of religious
liberty and of the balance of power in Europe. Never did man make a vast
political design more exclusively the thought and purpose of his life
than William did. The work which he accomplished on the field or in the
cabinet was his passion; his own aggrandizement was but the means to
that end. Whatever were his views on the crown of England, he never
attempted to realize them by violence and disorder. His mind was too
well regulated not to know the incurable vice of such means, and too
lofty to accept the yoke they impose. But when the career was opened to
him by England herself, he did not suffer himself to be deterred from
entering on it by the scruples of a private man; he wished his cause to
triumph, and he wished to reap the honor of the triumph. Rare and
glorious mixture of worldly ability and Christian faith, of personal
ambition and devotion to public ends!
Washington had no ambition; his country wanted him to serve her, and he
became great rather from a sense of duty than from taste; sometimes even
with a painful effort. The trials of his public life were bitter to him;
he preferred independence and repose to the exercise of power. But he
accepted, without hesitation, the task which his country imposed on him,
and in fulfilling it did nothing to diminish its burden. Born to govern,
though he had no delight in governing, he told the American people what
he believed to be true, and persisted in doing what he thought wise,
with a firmness as unshaken as it was simple, and a sacrifice of
popularity the more meritorious as it was not compensated by the
pleasures of domination. The servant of an infant republic, in which the
democratic spirit prevailed, he won the confidence of the people by
maintaining its interests in opposition to its inclinations. While
founding a new government, he practiced that policy, at once modest and
severe, measured and independent, which seems to belong only to the head
of an aristocratic senate ruling over an ancient state. His success does
equal honor to Washington and to his country.
Whether we consider the general destiny of nations, or the lives of the
great men whom they have produced; whether we are treating of a monarchy
or a republic, an aristocratic or a democratic society, we gather the
same light from facts; we see that the same laws determine the ultimate
success or failure of governments. The policy which preserves and
maintains a state in its ancient security and customary order is also
the only policy that can bring a revolution to a successful close, and
give stability to the institutions whose lasting excellence may justify
it to succeeding ages.
FIFTY YEARS AGO.
My father, whose manners were at once highbred and lively, had some
great acquaintances; but I recollect none of them personally, except an
old lady of quality, who (if memory does not strangely deceive me, and
give me a personal share in what I only heard talked of; for old
autobiographers of childhood must own themselves liable to such
confusions) astounded me one day by letting her false teeth slip out,
and clapping them in again.
I had no idea of the existence of such phenomena, and could almost as
soon have expected her to take off her head and readjust it. She lived
in Red Lion-square, a quarter in different estimation from what it is
now. It was at her house, I believe, that my father one evening met
Wilkes. He did not know him by sight, and happening to fall into
conversation with him, while the latter sat looking down, he said
something in Wilkes's disparagement, on which the jovial demagogue
looked up in his face, and burst out a laughing.
I do not exactly know how people dressed at that time; but I believe
that sacks, and negligées, and toupees were going out, and the pigtail
and the simpler modern style of dress coming in. I recollect hearing my
mother describe the misery of having her hair dressed two or three
stories high, and of lying in it all night ready for some visit or
spectacle next day. I think I also recollect seeing Wilkes himself in an
old-fashioned flap-waistcoated suit of scarlet and gold; and I am sure I
have seen Murphy, the dramatist, a good deal later, in a suit of a like
fashion, though soberer, and a large cocked-hat. The cocked-hat in
general survived till nearly the present century. It was superseded by
the round one during the French Revolution. I remember our steward at
school, a very solemn personage, making his appearance in one, to our
astonishment, and not a little to the diminution of his dignity. Some
years later, I saw Mr. Pitt in a blue coat, buckskin breeches and boots,
and a round hat, with powder and pigtail. He was thin and gaunt, with
his hat off his forehead, and his nose in the air. Much about the same
time I saw his friend, the first Lord Liverpool, a respectable looking
old gentleman, in a brown wig. Later still, I saw Mr. Fox, fat and
jovial, though he was then declining. He, who had been a "beau" in his
youth, then looked something quaker-like as to dress, with plain colored
clothes, a broad round hat, white waistcoat, and, if I am not mistaken,
white stockings. He was standing in Parliament-street, just where the
street commences as you leave Whitehall; and was making two young
gentlemen laugh heartily at something which he seemed to be relating.
My father once took me--but I can not say at what period of my
juvenility--into both houses of Parliament. In the Commons, I saw Mr.
Pitt sawing the air, and occasionally turning to appeal to those about
him, while he spoke in a loud, important, and hollow voice. When the
persons he appealed to, said "Hear! hear!" I thought they said "Dear!
dear!" in objection; and I wondered that he did not seem in the least
degree disconcerted. The house of Lords, I must say (without meaning
disrespect to an assembly which must always have contained some of the
most accomplished men in the country), surprised me with the personally
insignificant look of its members. I had, to be sure, conceived
exaggerated notions of the magnates of all countries; and perhaps might
have expected to behold a set of conscript fathers; but in no respect,
real or ideal, did they appear to me in their corporate aspect, like any
thing which is understood by the word "noble." The Commons seemed to me
to have the advantage; though they surprised me with lounging on the
benches, and retaining their hats. I was not then informed enough to
know the difference between apparent and substantial importance; much
less aware of the positive exaltation, which that very simplicity, and
that absence of pretension, gave to the most potent assembly in
Europe.--_Leigh Hunt's Autobiography._
[From Household Words.]
A PARIS NEWSPAPER.
Within the precincts of that resort for foreigners and provincials in
Paris, the Palais Royal, is situate the Rue du 24 Fevrier. This
revolutionary name, given after the last outbreak, is still pronounced
with difficulty by those who, of old, were wont to call it the Rue de
Valois. People are becoming accustomed to call the royally named street
by its revolutionary title, although it is probable that no one will
ever succeed in calling the Palais Royal Palais National; the force of
habit being in this instance too great to efface old recollections. Few
foreigners have ever penetrated into the Rue de 24 Fevrier, though it
forms one of the external galleries of the Palais Royal, and one may see
there the smoky kitchens, dirty cooks, the night-side in fact, of the
splendid restaurants, whose gilt fronts attract attention inside.
Rubicund apples, splendid game, truffles, and ortolans, deck the one
side; smoke, dirty plates, rags, and smutty saucepans may be seen on the
other.
It is from an office in the Rue de 24 Fevrier, almost opposite the dark
side of a gorgeous Palais Royal restaurant, that issue 40,000 copies of
a daily print, entitled the "Constitutionnel."
Newspaper offices, be it remarked, are always to be found in odd holes
and corners. To the mass in London, Printing-house square, or
Lombard-street, Whitefriars, are mystical localities; yet they are the
daily birth-places of that fourth estate which fulminates anathemas on
all the follies and weaknesses of governments; and, without which, no
one can feel free or independent. The "Constitutionnel" office is about
as little known to the mass of its subscribers as either Printing-house
square or Whitefriars.
There is always an old and respectable look about the interior of
newspaper establishments, in whatever country you may find them. For
rusty dinginess, perhaps, there is nothing to equal a London office,
with its floors strewed with newspapers from all parts of the world,
parliamentary reports, and its shelves creaking under books of all
sorts, thumbed to the last extremity. Notwithstanding these appearances,
however, there is discipline--there is real order in the apparent
disorder of things. Those newspapers that are lying in heaps have to be
accurately filed; those books of reference can be pounced upon when
wanted, on the instant; and as to reports, the place of each is as well
known as if all labeled and ticketed with the elaborate accuracy of a
public library.
Not less rusty and not less disorderly is the appearance of a French
newspaper office; but how different the aspect of things from what you
see in England!
Over the office of the "Constitutionnel" is a dingy tricolor flag. A few
broken steps lead to a pair of folding-doors. Inside is the sanctuary of
the office, guarded by that flag as if by the honor of the country: for
tricolor represents all Frenchmen, be he prince or proletarian.
You enter through a narrow passage flanked with wire cages, in which are
confined for the day the clerks who take account of advertisements and
subscriptions. Melancholy objects seem these caged birds, whose hands
alone emerge at intervals through the pigeon-holes made for the purpose
of taking in money and advertisements. The universal beard and mustache
that ornament their chins, look, however, more unbusiness-like than are
the men really. They are shrewd and knowing birds that are inclosed in
these wire cages.
At publishing time, boys rushing in for papers, as in London offices,
are not here to be seen. The reason of this is simple: French newspaper
proprietors prefer doing their work themselves--they will have no middle
men. They serve all their customers by quarterly, yearly, or half-yearly
subscriptions. In every town in France there are subscription offices
for this journal, as well, indeed, as for all great organs of the press
generally. There are regular forms set up like registers at the
post-office, and all of these are gathered at the periodical renewal of
subscriptions to the central office. The period of renewal is every
fortnight.
Passing still further up the narrow and dim passage, one sees a
pigeon-hole, over which is written the word "Advertisements." This
superscription is now supererogatory, for there no advertisements are
received; that branch of the journal having been farmed out to a company
at 350,000 fr. a year. This is a system which evidently saves a vast
deal of trouble. The Advertising Company of Paris has secured almost a
monopoly of announcements and puffs. It has bought up the last page of
nearly every Paris journal which owns the patronage and confidence of
the advertising public of the French capital. At the end of the same
dark passages are the rooms specially used for the editors and writers.
In France, journals are bought for their polemics, and not for their
news: many of them have fallen considerably, however, from the high
estate which they held in public opinion previous to the last
revolution. There are men who wrote in them to advocate and enforce
principles, but in the chopping and changing times that France lives in,
it is not unusual to find the same men with different principles,
interest, or gain, being the object of each change. This result of
revolution might have been expected; and though it would be unfair to
involve the whole press in a sweeping accusation, cases in point have
been sufficiently numerous to cause a want of confidence in many
quarters against the entire press.
The doings of newspaper editors are not catalogued in print at Paris, as
in America; but their influence being more occult, is not the less
powerful, and it is this feeling that leads people to pay more attention
to this or that leading article than to mere news. The announcement of a
treaty having been concluded between certain powers of Europe, may not
lower the funds; but if an influential journal expresses an opinion that
certain dangers are to be apprehended from the treaty in question, the
exchanges will be instantly affected. This is an instance among many
that the French people are to be led in masses. Singly they have
generally no ideas, either politically or commercially.
The importance of a journal being chiefly centered in that portion
specially devoted to politics, the writers of which are supposed, right
or wrong, to possess certain influences, it is not astonishing the
editorial offices have few occupants. The editorial department of the
"Constitutionnel" wears a homely appearance, but borrows importance from
the influence that is wielded in it--writers decorated with the red
ribbon are not unfrequently seen at work in it. In others, and
especially in the editorial offices of some journals, may be seen,
besides the pen, more offensive weapons, such as swords and pistols.
This is another result of the personal system of journalism. As in
America, the editor may find himself in the necessity of defending his
arguments by arms. He is too notorious to be able to resort to the
stratagem of a well-known wit, who kept a noted boxer in his front
office to represent the editor in hostile encounters. He goes out,
therefore, to fight a duel, on which sometimes depends not only his own
fate, but that of his journal.
With regard to the personal power of a newspaper name, it is only
necessary in order to show how frequently it still exists, to state that
the provisional government of February, 1848, was concocted in a
newspaper office, and the revolution of 1830 was carried on by the
editors of a popular journal--that among the lower orders in France, at
the present time, the names that are looked up to as those of chiefs,
belong to newspaper editors, whose leading articles are read and
listened to in cheap newspaper clubs, and whose "orders" are followed as
punctually and as certainly as those of a general by his troops. A
certain class of French politicians may be likened to sheep: they follow
their "leaders."
The smallness of the number of officials in a French newspaper office is
to be accounted for from the fact that parliamentary debates are
transcribed on the spot where the speeches are made; and the reporting
staff never stirs from the legislative assembly. The divers corps of
reporters for Paris journals form a corporation, with its aldermen, or
syndici, and other minor officers. Each reporter is relieved every two
minutes; and while his colleagues are succeeding each other with the
same rapidity, he transcribes the notes taken during his two minutes'
"turn." The result of this revolving system is collated and arranged by
a gentleman selected for the purpose. This mode of proceeding insures,
if necessary, the most verbatim transmission of an important speech, and
more equably divides the work, than does the English system, where each
reporter takes notes for half or three quarters of an hour, and spends
two or three hours, and sometimes four or five, to transcribe his notes.
The French parliamentary reporter is not the dispassionate auditor which
the English one is. He applauds or condemns the orators, cheers or hoots
with all the vehemence of an excited partisan.
"Penny-a-liners" are unknown in Paris; the foreign and home intelligence
being elaborated in general news' offices, independent of the
newspapers. It is there that all the provincial journals are received,
the news of the day gathered up, digested, and multiplied by means of
lithography; which is found more efficacious than the stylet and oiled
"flimsy" paper of our Penny-a-liners. It is from these latter places
too, that the country journals, as well as many of the foreign press,
the German, the Belgium, and the Spanish, are supplied with Paris news.
England is a good market, as most of our newspapers are wealthy enough
to have correspondents of their own.
My first visit to the "Constitutionnel" was in the day-time, and I
caught the editor as he was looking over some of his proofs. Their
curious appearance led me to ask how they were struck off, and, in order
to satisfy me, he led the way up a dark stair, from which we entered
upon the composing-rooms of the premises. These, in appearance, were
like all other composing-rooms that I had seen; the forms, and cases for
the type, were similar to those in London; the men themselves had that
worn and pale look which characterizes the class to which they belong,
and their pallor was not diminished by their wearing of the long beard
and mustache. Their unbuttoned shirts and bare breasts, the short clay
pipe, reminded me of the heroes of the barricades; indeed, I have every
reason to know that these very compositors are generally foremost in
revolutions; and though they often print ministerial articles, they are
not sharers in the opinions which they help to spread. The head printer
contracts for the printing, and chooses his men where he can find them
best. As a body, these men were provident, I was told, and all
subscribed to a fund for their poor, their orphans and widows; they form
a sort of trade union, and have very strict regulations.
I found a most remarkable want of convenience in the working of the
types. For instance, there were no galleys, or longtitudinal trays, on
which to place the type when it was set up; but when a small quantity
had been put together in column on a broad copper table, a string was
passed round it to keep it together. Nor was there any hand-press for
taking proofs; and here I found the explanation of the extraordinary
appearance of the proofs I had seen below. For when I asked to have one
struck off, the head printer placed a sheet of paper over the type, and
with a great brush beat it in, giving the proof a sunken and embossed
appearance, which it seemed to me would render correction exceedingly
difficult. The French, it seems, care not for improvement in this
respect, any more than the Chinese, whom the brush has served in place
of a printing-press for some three thousand years.
This journal has, as I have said, from 40,000 to 50,000 subscribers, in
order to serve whom it was necessary that the presses should be at work
as early as eleven o'clock at night. But there is no difficulty in doing
this, where news not being the _sine quà non_ of journalism, provincial
and foreign intelligence is give as fresh, which in England would be
considered much behind in time. But even when commencing business at the
early hour above mentioned, I found that it had been necessary for the
paper to be composed twice over, in order to save time; and thus two
printers' establishments were required to bring out each number of the
journal in sufficient time for the country circulation by early morning
trains. The necessity for this double composition is still existing in
most of the French newspaper offices, but had been obviated here lately,
by the erection of a new printing-machine, which sufficed by the speed
of its working to print the given number of copies necessary for
satisfying the wants of each day.
Having seen through the premises, and witnessed all that was interesting
in the day-time, I was politely requested to return in the evening, and
see the remaining process of printing the paper and getting it ready to
send out from the office.
Punctually at eleven o'clock I was in the Rue du 24 Fevrier. Passing
through the offices which I had seen in the morning, I was led by a sort
of guide down to some passages dimly lighted with lamps. To the right
and to the left we turned, descending stone steps into the bowels of the
earth as it seemed to me; the walls oozing with slimy damp in some
parts; dry and saltpetry in others. A bundle of keys, which were
jingling in my guide's hand, made noises which reminded me of the
description of prisoners going down into the Bastile or Tower. At
another moment a sound of voices in the distance, reminded me of a scene
of desperate coiners in a cellar.
These sounds grew louder, as we soon entered a vast stone cellar, in
which rudely dressed men, half-naked as to their breasts and arms, were
to be seen flitting to and fro at the command of a superior; their long
beards and grimy faces, their short pipes and dirty appearance, made
them look more like devils than men, and I bethought me that here, at
last, I had found that real animal--the printer's devil.
There were two or three printing-presses in the room, only one of which
was going. Its rolling sound was like thunder in the cave, in which we
stood. As paper after paper flew out from the sides of this creaking
press, they were carried to a long table and piled up in heaps.
Presently some of the stoutest men shouldered a mass of those, and my
conducter and myself following them, we entered a passage which led to
another cellar, contiguous to that in which the papers were printed.
There, sitting round a number of tables, were several young women. These
women seized upon a portion of the papers brought in, and with an
amazing rapidity folded them into a small compass. In a few minutes all
the papers I had seen printed were folded and numbered off by dozens.
Then comes another operation: a man came round and deposited before each
woman a bundle of little paper slips, which I found to be the addresses
of the subscribers. The women placed the labels and the paste on one
side, and commenced operations. A bundle of papers, folded, was placed
before each; the forefinger, dipped in the paste, immediately touched
the paper and the label simultaneously, and the "Constitutionnel" flew
out with a speed perfectly astonishing from the hands of these women,
ready to be distributed in down or country. They were then finishing the
labeling of the papers for Paris circulation; 20,000 copies scarcely
sufficing for the supply.
This was the concluding sight in my visit to a Paris Newspaper-Office.
ON THE DEATH OF AN INFANT.
TO A MOTHER.
BY THE AUTHORESS OF "THE DISCIPLINE OF LIFE".
His languid eyes are closing,
On the pale, placid cheek,
The lashes dark reposing,
So wearily, so weak.
He gasps with failing breath,
A faint and feeble strife with death;
Fainter and fainter still--'tis past.
That one soft sigh--the last.
Thy watching and thy fearing,
Mother, is over now;
The seal of death is bearing
That pale but angel brow,
And now in the deep calm
That follows days of wild alarm,
Thy heart sinks down, and weeps, and weeps,
O'er him who silent sleeps.
Oh, Mother, hush thy crying,
The ill of life is o'er,
E'en now his wings are flying
Unto a happy shore;
Those wings of stainless white
Unfolded ne'er to earthly sight,
He spreads them now, they bear him high
Unto the angel company.
From sight of evil shrinking,
From thought of grief like thine
At the first summons sinking
Into the arms divine.
Oh! thou who knowest life,
Temptation, trial, toil and strife,
Wilt thou not still thine aching breast
To bless his early rest?
[From the Autobiography of Leigh Hunt.]
RECOLLECTIONS OF EMINENT MEN.
BY LEIGH HUNT.
Just after this period I fell in with a new set of acquaintances,
accounts of whom may not be uninteresting. I forget what it was that
introduced me to Mr. Hill, proprietor of the _Monthly Mirror_; but at
his house at Sydenham I used to meet his editor, Du Bois; Thomas
Campbell, who was his neighbor; and the two Smiths, authors of _The
Rejected Addresses_. I saw also Theodore Hook, and Mathews, the
comedian. Our host was a jovial bachelor, plump and rosy as an abbot;
and no abbot could have presided over a more festive Sunday. The wine
flowed merrily and long; the discourse kept pace with it; and next
morning, in returning to town, we felt ourselves very thirsty. A pump by
the road-side, with a plash round it, was a bewitching sight.
They who knew Mr. Campbell only as the author of _Gertrude of Wyoming_,
and the _Pleasures of Hope_, would not have suspected him to be a merry
companion, overflowing with humor and anecdote, and any thing but
fastidious. These Scotch poets have always something in reserve. It is
the only point in which the major part of them resemble their
countrymen. The mistaken character which the lady formed of Thomson from
his _Seasons_ is well known. He let part of the secret out in his
_Castle of Indolence_; and the more he let out, the more honor it did to
the simplicity and cordiality of the poet's nature, though not always to
the elegance of it. Allan Ramsay knew his friends Gay and Somerville as
well in their writings, as he did when he came to be personally
acquainted with them; but Allan, who had bustled up from a barber's shop
into a bookseller's, was "a cunning shaver;" and nobody would have
guessed the author of the _Gentle Shepherd_ to be penurious. Let none
suppose that any insinuation to that effect is intended against
Campbell. He was one of the few men whom I could at any time have walked
half a dozen miles through the snow to spend an evening with; and I
could no more do this with a penurious man than I could with a sulky
one. I know but of one fault he had, besides an extreme cautiousness in
his writings, and that one was national, a matter of words, and amply
overpaid by a stream of conversation, lively, piquant, and liberal, not
the less interesting for occasionally betraying an intimacy with pain,
and for a high and somewhat strained tone of voice, like a man speaking
with suspended breath, and in the habit of subduing his feelings. No man
felt more kindly toward his fellow-creatures, or took less credit for
it. When he indulged in doubt and sarcasm, and spoke contemptuously of
things in general, he did it, partly, no doubt, out of actual
dissatisfaction, but more perhaps than he suspected, out of a fear of
being thought weak and sensitive; which is a blind that the best men
very commonly practice. He professed to be hopeless and sarcastic, and
took pains all the while to set up a university (the London).
When I first saw this eminent person, he gave me the idea of a French
Virgil. Not that he was like a Frenchman, much less the French
translator of Virgil. I found him as handsome, as the Abbé Delille is
said to have been ugly. But he seemed to me to embody a Frenchman's
ideal notion of the Latin poet; something a little more cut and dry than
I had looked for; compact and elegant, critical and acute, with a
consciousness of authorship upon him; a taste over-anxious not to commit
itself, and refining and diminishing nature as in a drawing-room mirror.
This fancy was strengthened in the course of conversation, by his
expatiating on the greatness of Racine. I think he had a volume of the
French poet in his hand. His skull was sharply cut and fine; with
plenty, according to the phrenologists, both of the reflective and
amative organs: and his poetry will bear them out. For a lettered
solitude, and a bridal properly got up, both according to law and
luxury, commend us to the lovely _Gertrude of Wyoming_. His face and
person were rather on a small scale; his features regular; his eye
lively and penetrating; and when he spoke, dimples played about his
mouth; which, nevertheless, had something restrained and close in it.
Some gentle puritan seemed to have crossed the breed, and to have left a
stamp on his face, such as we often see in the female Scotch face rather
than the male. But he appeared not at all grateful for this; and when
his critics and his Virgilianism were over, very unlike a puritan he
talked! He seemed to spite his restrictions; and, out of the natural
largeness of his sympathy with things high and low, to break at once out
of Delille's Virgil into Cotton's, like a boy let loose from school.
When I had the pleasure of hearing him afterward, I forgot his
Virgilianisms, and thought only of the delightful companion, the
unaffected philanthropist, and the creator of a beauty worth all the
heroines in Racine.
Campbell tasted pretty sharply of the good and ill of the present state
of society, and, for a bookman, had beheld strange sights. He witnessed
a battle in Germany from the top of a convent (on which battle he has
left us a noble ode); and he saw the French cavalry enter a town, wiping
their bloody swords on the horses' manes. He was in Germany a second
time--I believe to purchase books; for in addition to his classical
scholarship, and his other languages, he was a reader of German. The
readers there, among whom he is popular, both for his poetry and his
love of freedom, crowded about him with affectionate zeal; and they gave
him, what he did not dislike, a good dinner. Like many of the great men
in Germany, Schiller, Wieland, and others, he did not scruple to become
editor of a magazine; and his name alone gave it a recommendation of the
greatest value, and such as made it a grace to write under him.
I remember, one day at Sydenham, Mr. Theodore Hook coming in
unexpectedly to dinner, and amusing us very much with his talent at
extempore verse. He was then a youth, tall, dark, and of a good person,
with small eyes, and features more round than weak; a face that had
character and humor, but no refinement. His extempore verses were really
surprising. It is easy enough to extemporize in Italian--one only
wonders how, in a language in which every thing conspires to render
verse-making easy, and it is difficult to avoid rhyming, this talent
should be so much cried up--but in English it is another matter. I have
known but one other person besides Hook, who could extemporize in
English; and he wanted the confidence to do it in public. Of course, I
speak of rhyming. Extempore blank verse, with a little practice, would
be found as easy in English as rhyming is in Italian. In Hook the
faculty was very unequivocal. He could not have been aware of all the
visitors, still less of the subject of conversation when he came in, and
he talked his full share till called upon; yet he ran his jokes and his
verses upon us all in the easiest manner, saying something
characteristic of every body, or avoiding it with a pun; and he
introduced so agreeably a piece of village scandal upon which the party
had been rallying Campbell, that the poet, though not unjealous of his
dignity, was, perhaps, the most pleased of us all. Theodore afterward
sat down to the pianoforte, and enlarging upon this subject, made an
extempore parody of a modern opera, introducing sailors and their
clap-traps, rustics, &c., and making the poet and his supposed flame,
the hero and heroine. He parodied music as well as words, giving us the
most received cadences and flourishes, and calling to mind (not without
some hazard to his filial duties) the commonplaces of the pastoral songs
and duets of the last half century; so that if Mr. Dignum, the Damon of
Vauxhall, had been present, he would have doubted whether to take it as
an affront or a compliment. Campbell certainly took the theme of the
parody as a compliment; for having drank a little more wine than usual
that evening, and happening to wear a wig on account of having lost his
hair by a fever, he suddenly took off the wig, and dashed it at the head
of the performer, exclaiming, "You dog! I'll throw my laurels at you."
Mathews, the comedian, I had the pleasure of seeing at Mr. Hill's
several times, and of witnessing his imitations, which, admirable as
they were on the stage, were still more so in private. His wife
occasionally came with him, with her handsome eyes, and charitably made
tea for us. Many years afterward I had the pleasure of seeing them at
their own table; and I thought that while Time, with unusual courtesy,
had spared the sweet countenance of the lady, he had given more force
and interest to that of the husband in the very plowing of it up. Strong
lines had been cut, and the face stood them well. I had seldom been more
surprised than on coming close to Mathews on that occasion, and seeing
the bust which he possessed in his gallery of his friend Liston. Some of
these comic actors, like comic writers, are as unfarcical as can be
imagined in their interior. The taste for humor comes to them by the
force of contrast. The last time I had seen Mathews, his face appeared
to me insignificant to what it was then. On the former occasion he
looked like an irritable in-door pet: on the latter, he seemed to have
been grappling with the world, and to have got vigor by it. His face had
looked out upon the Atlantic, and said to the old waves, "Buffet on; I
have seen trouble as well as you." The paralytic affection, or whatever
it was, that twisted his mouth when young, had formerly appeared to be
master of his face, and given it a character of indecision and alarm. It
now seemed a minor thing; a twist in a piece of old oak. And what a bust
was Liston's! The mouth and chin, with the throat under it, hung like an
old bag; but the upper part of the head was as fine as possible. There
was a speculation, a lookout, and even an elevation of character in it,
as unlike the Liston on the stage, as Lear is to King Pippin. One might
imagine Laberius to have had such a face.
The reasons why Mathews's imitations were still better in private than
in public were, that he was more at his ease personally, more secure of
his audience ("fit though few"), and able to interest them with traits
of private character, which could not have been introduced on the stage.
He gave, for instance, to persons who he thought could take it rightly,
a picture of the manners and conversation of Sir Walter Scott, highly
creditable to that celebrated person, and calculated to add regard to
admiration. His commonest imitations were not superficial. Something of
the mind and character of the individual was always insinuated, often
with a dramatic dressing, and plenty of sauce piquante. At Sydenham he
used to give us a dialogue among the actors, each of whom found fault
with another for some defect or excess of his own. Kemble objecting to
stiffness, Munden to grimace, and so on. His representation of Incledon
was extraordinary: his nose seemed actually to become aquiline. It is a
pity I can not put upon paper, as represented by Mr. Mathews, the
singular gabblings of that actor, the lax and sailor-like twist of mind,
with which every thing hung upon him; and his profane pieties in quoting
the Bible; for which, and swearing, he seemed to have an equal
reverence.
One morning, after stopping all night at this pleasant house, I was
getting up to breakfast, when I heard the noise of a little boy having
his face washed. Our host was a merry bachelor, and to the rosiness of a
priest might, for aught I knew, have added the paternity; but I had
never heard of it, and still less expected to find a child in his house.
More obvious and obstreperous proofs, however, of the existence of a boy
with a dirty face, could not have been met with. You heard the child
crying and objecting; then the woman remonstrating; then the cries of
the child snubbed and swallowed up in the hard towel; and at intervals
out came his voice bubbling and deploring, and was again swallowed up.
At breakfast, the child being pitied, I ventured to speak about it, and
was laughing and sympathizing in perfect good faith, when Mathews came
in, and I found that the little urchin was he.
Of James Smith, a fair, stout, fresh-colored man, with round features, I
recollect little, except that he used to read to us trim verses, with
rhymes as pat as butter. The best of his verses are in the _Rejected
Addresses_; and they are excellent. Isaac Hawkins Browne with his _Pipe
of Tobacco_, and all the rhyming _jeux-d'esprit_ in all the Tracts, are
extinguished in the comparison; not excepting the _Probationary Odes_.
Mr. Fitzgerald found himself bankrupt in _non sequiturs_; Crabbe could
hardly have known which was which, himself or his parodist; and Lord
Byron confessed to me, that the summing up of his philosophy, to wit,
that
"Naught is every thing, and every thing is naught,"
was very posing. Mr. Smith would sometimes repeat after dinner, with his
brother Horace, an imaginary dialogue, stuffed full of incongruities,
that made us roll with laughter. His ordinary verse and prose were too
full of the ridicule of city pretensions. To be superior to any thing,
it should not always be running in one's head.
His brother Horace was delicious. Lord Byron used to say, that this
epithet should be applied only to eatables; and that he wondered a
friend of his (I forget who) that was critical in matters of eating,
should use it in any other sense. I know not what the present usage may
be in the circles, but classical authority is against his lordship, from
Cicero downward; and I am content with the modern warrant of another
noble wit, the famous Lord Peterborough, who, in his fine, open way,
said of Fenelon, that he was such a "delicious creature, he was forced
to get away from him, else he would have made him pious!" I grant there
is something in the word delicious which may be said to comprise a
reference to every species of pleasant taste. It is at once a
quintessence and a compound; and a friend, to deserve the epithet,
ought, perhaps, to be capable of delighting us as much over our wine, as
on graver occasions. Fenelon himself could do this, with all his piety;
or rather he could do it because his piety was of the true sort, and
relished of every thing that was sweet and affectionate. A finer nature
than Horace Smith's, except in the single instance of Shelley, I never
met with in man; nor even in that instance, all circumstances
considered, have I a right to say that those who knew him as intimately
as I did the other, would not have had the same reasons to love him.
Shelley himself had the highest regard for Horace Smith, as may be seen
by the following verses, the initials in which the reader has here the
pleasure of filling up:
"Wit and sense,
Virtue and human knowledge, all that might
Make this dull world a business of delight,
Are all combined in H. S."
Horace Smith differed with Shelley on some points; but on others, which
all the world agree to praise highly, and to practice very little, he
agreed so entirely, and showed unequivocally that he did agree, that,
with the exception of one person (Vincent Novello), too diffident to
gain such an honor from his friends, they were the only two men I had
then met with, from whom I could have received and did receive advice or
remonstrance with perfect comfort, because I could be sure of the
unmixed motives and entire absence of self-reflection, with which it
would come from them. Shelley said to me once, "I know not what Horace
Smith must take me for sometimes: I am afraid he must think me a strange
fellow: but is it not odd, that the only truly generous person I ever
knew, who had money to be generous with, should be a stockbroker! And he
writes poetry, too," continued Shelley, his voice rising in a fervor of
astonishment; "he writes poetry and pastoral dramas, and yet knows how
to make money, and does make it, and is still generous!" Shelley had
reason to like him. Horace Smith was one of the few men, who, through a
cloud of detraction, and through all that difference of conduct from the
rest of the world, which naturally excites obloquy, discerned the
greatness of my friend's character. Indeed, he became a witness to a
very unequivocal proof of it, which I shall mention by-and-by. The
mutual esteem was accordingly very great, and arose from circumstances
most honorable to both parties. "I believe," said Shelley on another
occasion, "that I have only to say to Horace Smith that I want a hundred
pounds or two, and he would send it me without any eye to its being
returned; such faith has he that I have something within me, beyond what
the world supposes, and that I could only ask his money for a good
purpose." And Shelley would have sent for it accordingly, if the person
for whom it was intended had not said Nay. I will now mention the
circumstance which first gave my friend a regard for Horace Smith. It
concerns the person just mentioned, who is a man of letters. It came to
Mr. Smith's knowledge, many years ago, that this person was suffering
under a pecuniary trouble. He knew little of him at the time, but had
met him occasionally; and he availed himself of this circumstance to
write him a letter as full of delicacy and cordiality as it could hold,
making it a matter of grace to accept a bank-note of £100 which he
inclosed. I speak on the best authority, that of the obliged person
himself; who adds that he not only did accept the money, but felt as
light and happy under the obligation, as he has felt miserable under the
very report of being obliged to some; and he says, that nothing could
induce him to withhold his name, but a reason, which the generous,
during his lifetime, would think becoming.
I have said that Horace Smith was a stockbroker. He left business with a
fortune, and went to live in France, where, if he did not increase, he
did not seriously diminish it; and France added to the pleasant stock of
his knowledge.
On returning to England, he set about exerting himself in a manner
equally creditable to his talents and interesting to the public. I would
not insult either the modesty or the understanding of my friend while he
was alive, by comparing him with the author of _Old Mortality_ and _Guy
Mannering_: but I ventured to say, and I repeat, that the earliest of
his novels, _Brambletye House_, ran a hard race with the novel of
_Woodstock_, and that it contained more than one character not unworthy
of the best volumes of Sir Walter. I allude to the ghastly troubles of
the Regicide in his lone house; the outward phlegm and merry inward
malice of Winky Boss (a happy name), who gravely smoked a pipe with his
mouth, and laughed with his eyes; and, above all, to the character of
the princely Dutch merchant, who would cry out that he should be ruined,
at seeing a few nutmegs dropped from a bag, and then go and give a
thousand ducats for an antique. This is hitting the high mercantile
character to a niceity--minute and careful in its means, princely in its
ends. If the ultimate effect of commerce (_permulti transibunt_, &c.)
were not something very different from what its pursuers imagine, the
character would be a dangerous one to society at large, because it
throws a gloss over the spirit of money-getting; but, meanwhile, nobody
could paint it better, or has a greater right to recommend it, than he
who has been the first to make it a handsome portrait.
The personal appearance of Horace Smith, like that of most of the
individuals I have met with, was highly indicative of his character. His
figure was good and manly, inclining to the robust; and his countenance
extremely frank and cordial; sweet without weakness. I have been told he
was irascible. If so, it must have been no common offense that could
have irritated him. He had not a jot of it in his appearance.
Another set of acquaintances which I made at this time used to assemble
at the hospitable table of Mr. Hunter, the bookseller, in St. Paul's
Church-yard. They were the survivors of the literary party that were
accustomed to dine with his predecessor, Mr. Johnson. They came, as of
old, on the Friday. The most regular were Fuseli and Bonnycastle. Now
and then, Godwin was present: oftener Mr. Kinnaird the magistrate, a
great lover of Horace.
Fuseli was a small man, with energetic features, and a white head of
hair. Our host's daughter, then a little girl, used to call him the
white-headed lion. He combed his hair up from the forehead; and, as his
whiskers were large, his face was set in a kind of hairy frame, which,
in addition to the fierceness of his look, really gave him an aspect of
that sort. Otherwise, his features were rather sharp than round. He
would have looked much like an old military officer, if his face,
besides its real energy, had not affected more. There was the same
defect in it as in his pictures. Conscious of not having all the
strength he wished, he endeavored to make out for it by violence and
pretension. He carried this so far, as to look fiercer than usual when
he sat for his picture. His friend and engraver, Mr. Houghton, drew an
admirable likeness of him in this state of dignified extravagance. He is
sitting back in his chair, leaning on his hand, but looking ready to
pounce withal. His notion of repose was like that of Pistol:
"Now, Pistol, lay thy head in Furies' lap."
Agreeably to this over-wrought manner, he was reckoned, I believe, not
quite so bold as he might have been. He painted horrible pictures, as
children tell horrible stories; and was frightened at his own
lay-figures. Yet he would hardly have talked as he did about his
terrors, had he been as timid as some supposed him. With the affected,
impression is the main thing, let it be produced how it may. A student
of the Academy told me, that Mr. Fuseli coming in one night, when a
solitary candle had been put on the floor in a corner of the room, to
produce some effect or other, he said it looked "like a damned soul."
This was by way of being Dantesque, as Michael Angelo was. Fuseli was an
ingenious caricaturist of that master, making great bodily displays of
mental energy, and being ostentatious with his limbs and muscles, in
proportion as he could not draw them. A leg or an arm was to be thrust
down one's throat, because he knew we should dispute the truth of it. In
the indulgence of this willfulness of purpose, generated partly by
impatience of study, partly by want of sufficient genius, and, no doubt,
also by a sense of superiority to artists who could do nothing but draw
correctly, he cared for no time, place, or circumstance, in his
pictures. A set of prints, after his designs, for Shakspeare and Cowper,
exhibit a chaos of mingled genius and absurdity, such as, perhaps, was
never before seen. He endeavored to bring Michael Angelo's apostles and
prophets, with their superhuman ponderousness of intention, into the
common-places of modern life. A student reading in a garden, is all over
intensity of muscle; and the quiet tea-table scene in Cowper, he has
turned into a preposterous conspiracy of huge men and women, all bent on
showing their thews and postures, with dresses as fantastical as their
minds. One gentleman, of the existence of whose trowsers you are not
aware till you see the terminating line at the ankle, is sitting and
looking grim on a sofa, with his hat on and no waistcoat. Yet there is
real genius in his designs for Milton, though disturbed, as usual, by
strainings after the energetic. His most extraordinary mistake, after
all, is said to have been on the subject of his coloring. It was a sort
of livid green, like brass diseased. Yet they say, that when praised for
one of his pictures, he would modestly observe, "It is a pretty color."
This might have been thought a jest on his part, if remarkable stories
were not told of the mistakes made by other people with regard to color.
Sight seems the least agreed upon, of all the senses.
Fuseli was lively and interesting in conversation, but not without his
usual faults of violence and pretension. Nor was he always as decorous
as an old man ought to be; especially one whose turn of mind is not of
the lighter and more pleasurable cast. The licenses he took were coarse,
and had not sufficient regard to his company. Certainly they went a
great deal beyond his friend Armstrong; to whose account, I believe,
Fuseli's passion for swearing was laid. The poet condescended to be a
great swearer, and Fuseli thought it energetic to swear like him. His
friendship with Bonnycastle had something child-like and agreeable in
it. They came and went away together, for years, like a couple of old
schoolboys. They, also, like boys, rallied one another, and sometimes
made a singular display of it--Fuseli, at least, for it was he that was
the aggressor.
Bonnycastle was a good fellow. He was a tall, gaunt, long-headed man,
with large features and spectacles, and a deep, internal voice, with a
twang of rusticity in it; and he goggled over his plate, like a horse. I
often thought that a bag of corn would have hung well on him. His laugh
was equine, and showed his teeth upward at the sides. Wordsworth, who
notices similar mysterious manifestations on the part of donkeys, would
have thought it ominous. Bonnycastle was passionately fond of quoting
Shakspeare, and telling stories; and if the _Edinburgh Review_ had just
come out, would give us all the jokes in it. He had once an
hypochondriacal disorder of long duration; and he told us, that he
should never forget the comfortable sensation given him one night during
this disorder, by his knocking a landlord, that was insolent to him,
down the man's staircase. On the strength of this piece of energy
(having first ascertained that the offender was not killed) he went to
bed, and had a sleep of unusual soundness. Perhaps Bonnycastle thought
more highly of his talents than the amount of them strictly warranted; a
mistake to which scientific men appear to be more liable than others,
the universe they work in being so large, and their universality (in
Bacon's sense of the word) being often so small. But the delusion was
not only pardonable, but desirable, in a man so zealous in the
performance of his duties, and so much of a human being to all about
him, as Bonnycastle was. It was delightful one day to hear him speak
with complacency of a translation which had appeared of one of his books
in Arabic, and which began by saying, on the part of the translator,
that "it had pleased God, for the advancement of human knowledge, to
raise us up a Bonnycastle." Some of his stories were a little romantic,
and no less authentic. He had an anecdote of a Scotchman, who boasted of
being descended from the Admirable Crichton; in proof of which, the
Scotchman said he had "a grit quantity of table-leenen in his
possassion, marked A. C., Admirable Creechton."
Kinnaird, the magistrate, was a stout, sanguine man, under the middle
height, with a fine, lamping black eye, lively to the last, and a person
that "had increased, was increasing, and ought to have been diminished;"
which is by no means what he thought of the prerogative. Next to his
bottle he was fond of his Horace; and, in the intervals of business at
the police-office, would enjoy both in his arm-chair. Between the vulgar
calls of this kind of magistracy, and the perusal of the urbane Horace,
there must have been a gusto of contradiction, which the bottle,
perhaps, was required to render quite palatable. Fielding did not love
his bottle the less for being obliged to lecture the drunken. Nor did
his son, who succeeded him in taste and office. I know not how a former
poet-laureat, Mr. Pye, managed; another man of letters who was fain to
accept a situation of this kind. Having been a man of fortune and a
member of Parliament, and loving his Horace to boot, he could hardly
have done without his wine. I saw him once in a state of scornful
indignation at being interrupted in the perusal of a manuscript by the
monitions of his police-officers, who were obliged to remind him, over
and over again, that he was a magistrate, and that the criminal
multitude were in waiting. Every time the door opened, he threatened and
he implored
"Otium divos rogat in patenti
Prensus."
Had you quoted this to Mr. Kinnaird, his eyes would have sparkled with
good-fellowship: he would have finished the verse and the bottle with
you, and proceeded to as many more as your head could stand. Poor
fellow, the last time I saw him, he was an apparition formidably
substantial. The door of our host's dining-room opened without my
hearing it, and, happening to turn round, I saw a figure in a great coat
literally almost as broad as it was long, and scarcely able to
articulate. He was dying of a dropsy, and was obliged to revive himself,
before he was fit to converse, by the wine that was killing him. But he
had cares besides, and cares of no ordinary description; and, for my
part, I will not blame even his wine for killing him, unless his cares
could have done it more agreeably. After dinner that day, he was
comparatively himself again, quoted his Horace as usual, talked of lords
and courts with a relish, and begged that _God save the King_ might be
played to him on the piano-forte; to which he listened, as if his soul
had taken its hat off. I believe he would have liked to die to _God save
the King_, and to have "waked and found those visions true."
[From Colburn's New Monthly Magazine.]
ODE TO THE SUN.
BY LEIGH HUNT.
The main object of this poem is to impress the beautiful and animating
fact, that the greatest visible agent in our universe, the Sun, is also
one of the most beneficent; and thus to lead to the inference, that
spiritual greatness and goodness are in like proportion, and its Maker
beneficence itself, through whatever apparent inconsistencies he may
work. The Sun is at once the greatest Might and Right that we behold.
A secondary intention of the poem is to admonish the carelessness with
which people in general regard the divinest wonders of the creation, in
consequence of being used to their society--this great and glorious
mystery, the Sun, not excepted. "Familiarity," it is said, "breeds
contempt." To which somebody emphatically added, "With the
contemptible." I am far from meaning to say that all who behold the Sun
with too little thought are contemptible. Habit does strange things,
even with the most reflecting. But of this I am sure, that in proportion
as any body wishes to prove himself worthy of his familiarity with great
objects, he will not be sorry to be reminded of their greatness,
especially as reverence need not diminish delight; for a heavenly
"Father" can no more desire the admiration of him to be oppressive to
us, than an earthly one; else fatherliness would be unfatherly, and
sunshine itself a gloom.
When the Florentines crowded to some lectures of Galileo, because they
were on a comet which had just made its appearance, the philosopher was
bold enough to rebuke them for showing such a childish desire to hear
him on this particular subject, when they were in the habit of
neglecting the marvels of creation which daily presented themselves to
their eyes.
ODE TO THE SUN.
Presence divine! Great lord of this our sphere!
Bringer of light, and life, and joy, and beauty--
God midst a million gods, that far and near
Hold each his orbs in rounds of rapturous duty;[A]
Oh, never may I, while I lift this brow,
Believe in any god _less_ like a god than thou.
Thou art the mightiest of all things we see,
And thou, the mightiest, art among the kindest;
The planets, dreadfully and easily,
About thee, as in sacred sport, thou windest;
And thine illustrious hands, for all that power,
Light soft on the babe's cheek, and nurse the budding flower.
They say that in thine orb is movement dire,
Tempest and flame, as on a million oceans:
Well may it be, thou heart of heavenly fire;
Such looks and smiles befit a god's emotions,
We know thee gentle in the midst of all,
By those smooth orbs in heaven, this sweet fruit on the wall.
I feel thee, here, myself, soft on my hand;
Around me is thy mute, celestial presence,
Reverence and awe would make me fear to stand
Within thy beam, were not all Good its essence:
Were not all Good its essence, and from thence
All good, glad heart deriv'd, and child-like confidence.
I know that there is Fear, and Grief, and Pain,
Strange foes, though stranger guardian friends of Pleasure:
I know that poor men lose, and rich men gain,
Though oft th' unseen adjusts the seeming measure;
I know that Guile may teach, while Truth must bow,
Or bear contempt and shame on his benignant brow.
But while thou sit'st, mightier than all, O Sun,
And e'en when sharpest felt, still throned in kindness.
I see that greatest and that best are one,
And that all else works tow'rd it, though in blindness
Evil I see, and Fear, and Grief, and Pain,
Work under Good, their lord, embodied in thy reign.
I see the molten gold darkly refine
O'er the great sea of human joy and sorrow,
I bear the deep voice of a grief divine
Calling sweet notes to some diviner morrow,
And though I know not how the two may part,
I feel thy rays, O Sun, write it upon my heart.
Upon my heart thou writest it, as thou,
Heart of these worlds, art writ on by a greater:
Beam'd on with love from some still mightier brow,
Perhaps by that which waits some new relater;
Some amaz'd man, who sees new splendors driven
Thick round a Sun of suns, and fears he looks at heaven.[B]
'Tis easy for vain man, Time's growing child,
To dare pronounce on thy material seeming:
Heav'n, for its own good ends, is mute and mild
To many a wrong of man's presumptuous dreaming.
Matter, or mind, of either, what knows he?
Or how with more than both thine orb divine may be!
Art thou a god, indeed? or thyself heaven?
And do we taste thee here in light and flowers?
Art thou the first sweet place, where hearts, made even,
Sing tender songs in earth-remembering bowers?
Enough, my soul. Enough through thee, O Sun,
To learn the sure good song--Greatest and Best are one.
Enough for man to work, to hope, to love,
Copying thy zeal untir'd, thy smile unscorning:
Glad to see gods thick as the stars above,
Bright with the God of gods' eternal morning;
Round about whom perchance endless they go,
Ripening their earths to heavens, as love and wisdom grow.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] _Rapturous_--transporting, carrying away. The reader can take the
word either in its spiritual or material sense, or both; according as he
agrees or disagrees with Keppler and others respecting the nature of the
planetary bodies.
[B] Alluding to a central sun; that is to say, a sun governing other
suns, which is supposed to exist in the Constellation Hercules.
[From Household Words.]
TWO-HANDED DICK THE STOCKMAN.
AN ADVENTURE IN THE BUSH.
Traveling in the Bush one rainy season, I put up for the night at a
small, weather-bound inn, perched half way up a mountain range, where
several Bush servants on the tramp had also taken refuge from the
down-pouring torrents. I had had a long and fatiguing ride over a very
bad country, so, after supper, retired into the furthest corner of the
one room, that served for "kitchen, and parlor, and all," and there,
curled up in my blanket, in preference to the bed offered by our host,
which was none of the cleanest; with half shut eyes, I glumly puffed at
my pipe in silence, allowing the hubble-bubble of the Bushmen's gossip
to flow through my unnoting ears.
Fortunately for my peace, the publican's stock of rum had been some time
exhausted, and as I was the latest comer, all the broiling and frying
had ceased, but a party sat round the fire, evidently set in for a spell
at "yarning." At first the conversation ran in ordinary channels, such
as short reminiscences of old world rascality, perils in the Bush. Till
at length a topic arose which seemed to have a paramount interest for
all. This was the prowess of a certain Two-handed Dick the Stockman.
"Yes, yes; I'll tell you what it is, mates," said one; "this confounded
reading and writing, that don't give plain fellows like you and me a
chance; now if it were to come to fighting for a living, I don't care
whether it was half-minute time and London rules, rough and tumble, or
single stick, or swords and bayonets, or tomahawks--I'm dashed if you
and me, and Two-handed Dick, wouldn't take the whole Legislative
Council, the Governor and Judges--one down t'other come on. Though, to
be sure, Dick could thrash any two of us."
I was too tired to keep awake, and dozed off, to be again and again
disturbed with cries of "Bravo, Dick!" "That's your sort!" "Houray,
Dick!" all signifying approval of that individual's conduct in some
desperate encounter, which formed the subject of a stirring narrative.
For months after that night this idea of Two-handed Dick haunted me, but
the bustle of establishing a new station at length drove it out of my
head.
I suppose a year had elapsed from the night when the fame of the
double-fisted stockman first reached me. I had to take a three days'
journey to buy a score of fine-wooled rams, through a country quite new
to me, which I chose because it was a short-cut recently discovered. I
got over, the first day, forty-five miles comfortably. The second day,
in the evening, I met an ill-looking fellow walking with a broken
musket, and his arm in a sling. He seemed sulky, and I kept my hand on
my double-barreled pistol all the time I was talking to him; he begged a
little tea and sugar, which I could not spare, but I threw him a fig of
tobacco. In answer to my questions about his arm, he told me, with a
string of oaths, that a bull, down in some mimosa flats, a day's journey
ahead, had charged him, flung him into a water-hole, broken his arm, and
made him lose his sugar and tea bag. Bulls in Australia are generally
quiet, but this reminded me that some of the Highland black cattle
imported by the Australian Company, after being driven off by a party of
Gully Rakees (cattle stealers), had escaped into the mountains and
turned quite wild. Out of this herd, which was of a breed quite unsuited
to the country, a bull sometimes, when driven off by a stronger rival,
would descend to the mimosa flats, and wander about, solitary and
dangerously fierce.
It struck me, as I rode off, that it was quite as well my friend's arm
and musket had been disabled, for he did not look the sort of man it
would be pleasant to meet in a thicket of scrub, if he fancied the horse
you rode. So, keeping one eye over my shoulder, and a sharp look-out for
any other traveler of the same breed, I rode off at a brisk pace. I made
out afterward that my foot friend was Jerry Johnson, hung for shooting a
bullock-driver the following year.
At sun-down, when I reached the hut where I had intended to sleep, I
found it deserted, and so full of fleas, I thought it better to camp
out; so I hobbled out old Gray-tail on the best piece of grass I could
find, which was very poor indeed.
The next morning, when I went to look for my horse, he was nowhere to be
found. I put the saddle on my head and tracked him for hours; it was
evident the poor beast had been traveling away in search of grass. I
walked until my feet were one mass of blisters; at length, when about to
give up the search in despair, having quite lost the track on stony
ground, I came upon the marks quite fresh in a bit of swampy ground, and
a few hundred yards further found Master Gray-tail rolling in the mud of
a nearly dry water-hole as comfortably as possible. I put down the
saddle and called him; at that moment I heard a loud roar and crash in a
scrub behind me, and out rushed, at a terrific pace, a black Highland
bull charging straight at me. I had only just time to throw myself on
one side flat on the ground as he thundered by me. My next move was to
scramble among a small clump of trees, one of great size, the rest were
mere saplings.
The bull having missed his mark, turned again, and first revenged
himself by tossing my saddle up in the air, until, fortunately, it
lodged in some bushes; then, having smelt me out, he commenced a circuit
round the trees, stamping, pawing, and bellowing frightfully. With his
red eyes, and long, sharp horns, he looked like a demon; I was quite
unarmed, having broken my knife the day before; my pistols were in my
holsters, and I was wearied to death. My only chance consisted in
dodging him round the trees until he should be tired out. Deeply did I
regret having left my faithful dogs Boomer and Bounder behind.
The bull charged again and again, sometimes coming with such force
against the tree that he fell on his knees, sometimes bending the
saplings behind which I stood until his horns almost touched me. There
was not a branch I could lay hold of to climb up. How long this awful
game of "_touchwood_" lasted, I know not; it seemed hours; after the
first excitement of self-preservation passed off, weariness again took
possession of me, and it required all the instinct of self-preservation
to keep me on my feet; several times the bull left me for a few seconds,
pacing suddenly away, bellowing his malignant discontent; but before I
could cross over to a better position he always came back at full speed.
My tongue clave to the roof of my mouth, my eyes grew hot and misty, my
knees trembled under me, I felt it impossible to hold out until dark. At
length I grew desperate, and determined to make a run for the opposite
covert the moment the bull turned toward the water-hole again. I felt
sure I was doomed, and thought of it until I grew indifferent. The bull
seemed to know I was worn out, and grew more fierce and rapid in his
charges, but just when I was going to sit down under the great tree, and
let him do his worst, I heard the rattle of a horse among the rocks
above, and a shout that sounded like the voice of an angel. Then came
the barking of a dog, and the loud reports of a stockwhip, but the bull,
with his devilish eyes fixed on me, never moved.
Up came a horseman at full speed; crack fell the lash on the black
bull's hide; out spirted the blood in a long streak. The bull turned
savagely--charged the horseman. The horse wheeled round just enough to
baffle him--no more--again the lash descended, cutting like a long,
flexible razor, but the mad bull was not to be beaten off by a whip: he
charged again and again; but he had met his match; right and left, as
needed, the horse turned, sometimes pivoting on his hind, sometime on
his fore-legs.
The stockman shouted something, leapt from his horse, and strode forward
to meet the bull with an open knife between his teeth. As the beast
lowered his head to charge, he seemed to catch him by the horns. There
was a struggle, a cloud of dust, a stamping like two strong men
wrestling--I could not see clearly; but the next moment the bull was on
his back, the blood welling from his throat, his limbs quivering in
death.
The stranger, covered with mud and dust, came to me, saying as
unconcernedly as if he had been killing a calf in a slaughter-house,
"He's dead enough, young man; he won't trouble any body any more."
I walked two or three paces toward the dead beast; my senses left me--I
fainted.
When I came to myself, my horse was saddled, bridled, and tied up to a
bush. My stranger friend was busy flaying the bull.
"I would like to have a pair of boots out of the old devil," he
observed, in answer to my inquiring look, "before the dingoes and the
eagle hawks dig into his carcase."
We rode out of the flats up a gentle ascent, as night was closing in. I
was not in talking humor; but I said, "You have saved my life."
"Well, I rather think I have," but this was muttered in an under tone;
"it's not the first I have saved, or taken either, for that matter."
I was too much worn out for thanking much, but I pulled out a silver
hunting-watch and put it into his hand. He pushed it back, almost
roughly, saying, "No, sir, not now; I shalln't take money or money's
worth for that, though I may ask something some time. It's nothing,
after all. I owed the old black devil a grudge for spoiling a blood
filly of mine; besides, though I didn't know it when I rode up first,
and went at the beast to take the devil out of myself as much as any
thing--I rather think that you are the young gentleman that ran through
the Bush at night to Manchester Dan's hut, when his wife was bailed up
by the Blacks, and shot one-eyed Jackey, in spite of the Governor's
proclamation."
"You seem to know me," I answered; "pray, may I ask who you are, if it
is a fair question, for I can not remember ever having seen you before."
"Oh, they call me 'Two-handed Dick,' in this country."
The scene in the roadside inn flashed on my recollection. Before I could
say another word, a sharp turn round the shoulder of the range we were
traversing, brought us in sight of the fire of a shepherd's hut. The
dogs ran out barking; we hallooed and cracked our whips, and the
hut-keeper came to meet us with a fire-stick in his hand.
"Lord bless my heart and soul! Dick, is that thee at last? Well, I
thought thee were't never coming;" cried the hut-keeper, a little man,
who came limping forward very fast with the help of a crutch-handled
stick. "I say, Missis, Missis, here's Dick, here's Two-handed Dick."
This was uttered in a shrill, hysterical sort of scream. Out came
"Missis" at the top of her speed, and began hugging Dick as he was
getting off his horse, her arms reached a little above his waist,
laughing and crying, both at the same time, while her husband kept fast
hold of the stockman's hand, muttering, "Lord, Dick I'm so glad to see
thee." Meanwhile, the dogs barking, and a flock of weaned lambs just
penned, ba'aing, made such a riot, that I was fairly bewildered. So,
feeling myself one too many, I slipped away, leading off both the horses
to the other side of the hut, where I found a shepherd, who showed me a
grass paddock to feed the nags a bit before turning them out for the
night. I said to him, "What _is_ the meaning of all this going on
between your mate and his wife, and the big stockman?"
"The meaning, stranger: why, that's Two-handed Dick, and my mate is
little Jemmy that he saved, and Charley Anvils at the same time, when
the blacks slaughtered the rest of the party, near on a dozen of them."
On returning, I found supper smoking on the table, and we had made a
regular "bush" meal. The stockman then told my adventure, and, when they
had exchanged all the news, I had little difficulty in getting the
hut-keeper to the point I wanted; the great difficulty lay in preventing
man and wife from telling the same story at the same time. However, by
judicious management, I was able to gather the following account of
_Two-handed Dick's Fight and Ride_.
"When first I met Dick he was second stockman to Mr. Ronalds, and I took
a shepherd's place there; it was my second place in this country, for
you see I left the old country in a bad year for the weaving trade, and
was one of the first batch of free emigrants that came out, the rest
were chiefly Irish. I found shepherding suit me very well, and my missis
was hut-keeper. Well, Dick and I got very thick; I used to write his
letters for him, and read in an evening, and so on. Well, though I
undertook a shepherd's place, I soon found I could handle an ax pretty
well. Throwing the shuttle gives the use of the arms, you see, and Dick
put into my head that I could make more money if I took to making
fences; I sharpening the rails, and making the mortice-holes, and a
stranger man setting them. I did several jobs at odd times, and was
thought very handy. Well, Mr. Ronalds, during the time of the great
drought, five years ago, determined to send up a lot of cattle to the
north, where he had heard there was plenty of water and grass, and form
a station there. Dick was picked out as stockman; a young gentleman, a
relative of Mr. Ronalds, went as head of the party, a very foolish,
conceited young man, who knew very little of bush life, and would not be
taught. There were eight splitters and fencers, besides Charley Anvils,
the blacksmith, and two bullock drivers.
"I got leave to go because I wanted to see the country, and Dick asked.
My missis was sorely against my going. I was to be storekeeper, as well
as do any farming and work, if wanted.
"We had two drays, and were well armed. We were fifteen days going up
before we got into the new country, and then we traveled five days;
sometimes twenty-four hours without water, and sometimes had to unload
the drays two or three times a day, to get over creeks. The fifth day we
came to very fine land; the grass met over our horses' necks, and the
river was a chain of water-holes, all full, and as clear as crystal. The
kangaroos were hopping about as plentiful as rabbits in a warren; and
the grass by the river side had regular tracks of the emus, where they
went down to drink.
"We had been among signs of the blacks, too, for five days, but had not
seen any thing of them, although we could hear the devils cooing at
nightfall, calling to each other. We kept regular watch and watch at
first--four sentinels, and every man sleeping with his gun at hand.
"Now, as it was Dick's business to tail (follow) the cattle, five
hundred head, I advised him to have his musket sawed off in the barrel,
so as to be a more handy size for using on horseback. He took my advice;
and Charley Anvils made a very good job of it, so that he could bring it
under his arm when hanging at his back from a rope sling, and fire with
one hand. It was lucky I thought of it, as it turned out.
"At length the overseer fixed on a spot for the station. It was very
well for water and grass, and a very pretty view, as he said, but it was
too near a thicket where the blacks would lie in ambush, for safety. The
old bushmen wanted it planted on a neck of land, where the waters
protected it all but one side, and there a row of fence would have made
it secure.
"Well, we set to work, and soon had a lot of tall trees down. Charley
put up his forge and his grindstone, to keep the ax sharp, and I staid
with him. Dick went tailing the cattle, and the overseer sat on a log,
and looked on. The second day a mob of blacks came down on the opposite
side of the river. They were quite wild, regular _myals_, but some of
our men with green branches, went and made peace with them. They liked
our bread and sugar; and after a short time we had a lot of them helping
to draw rails, fishing for us, bringing wild honey, kangaroos, rats, and
firewood, in return for butter and food, so we began to be less careful
about our arms. We gave them iron tomahawks, and they soon found out
that they could cut out an opossum from a hollow in half-an-hour with
one of our tomahawks, while it took a day with one of their own stone
ones.
"And so the time passed very pleasantly. We worked away. The young men
and gins worked for us. The chiefs adorned themselves with the trinkets
and clothes we gave them, and fished and hunted, and admired themselves
in the river.
"Dick never trusted them; he stuck to his cattle; he warned us not to
trust them, and the overseer called him a blood-thirsty, murdering
blackguard for his pains.
"One day, the whole party were at work, chopping and trimming
weather-boards for the hut; the blacks helping as usual. I was turning
the grindstone for Charley Anvils, and Dick was coming up to the dray to
get some tea, but there was a brow of a hill between him and us: the
muskets were all piled in one corner. I heard a howl, and then a
scream--our camp was full of armed blacks. When I raised my head, I saw
the chief, Captain Jack, we called him, with a broad ax in his hand, and
the next minute he had chopped the overseer's head clean off; in two
minutes all my mates were on the ground. Three or four came running up
to us; one threw a spear at me, which I half parried with a pannikin I
was using to wet the grindstone, but it fixed deep in my hip, and part
of it I believe is there still. Charley Anvils had an ax in his hand,
and cut down the first two fellows that came up to him, but he was
floored in a minute with twenty wounds. They were so eager to kill me,
that one of them, luckily, or I should not have been alive now, cut the
spear in my hip short off. Another, a young lad I had sharpened a
tomahawk for a few days before, chopped me across the head; you can see
the white hair. Down I fell, and nothing could have saved us, but the
other savages had got the tarpaulin off, and were screaming with
delight, plundering the drays, which called my enemies off. Just then,
Dick came in sight. He saw what was the matter; but although there were
more than a hundred black devils, all armed, painted, bloody, and
yelling, he never stopped or hesitated, but rode slap through the camp,
fired bang among them, killing two, and knocking out the brains of
another. As he passed by a top rail, where an ax was sticking, he caught
it up. The men in the camp were dead enough; the chief warriors had made
the rush there, and every one was pierced with several spears, or cut
down from close behind by axes in the hands of the chiefs. We, being
further off, had been attacked by the boys only. Dick turned toward us,
and shouted my name, I could not answer, but I managed to sit up an
instant; he turned toward me, leaned down, caught me by the jacket, and
dragged me on before him like a log. Just then Charley, who had crept
under the grindstone, cried, 'Oh, Dick, don't leave me!' As he said
that, a lot of them came running down, for they had seen enough to know
that, unless they killed us all, their job would not be half done. As
Dick turned to face them, they gave way, and flung spears, but they
could not hurt him: they managed to get between us and poor Charley.
Dick rode back a circuit, and dropped me among some bushes on a hill,
where I could see all. Four times he charged through and through a whole
mob, with an ax in one hand, and his short musket in the other. He cut
them down right and left, as if he had been mowing; he scared the
wretches, although the old women kept screeching and urging them on, as
they always do. At length, by help of his stirrup leather, he managed to
get Charley up behind him. He never could have done it, but his mare
fought, and bit, and turned when he bid her, so he threw the bridle on
her neck, and could use that terrible left arm of his. Well, he came up
to the hill, and lifted me on, and away we went for three or four miles,
but we knew the mare could not stand it long, so Dick got off, and
walked. When the blacks had pulled the drays' loads to pieces, they
began to follow us, but Dick never lost heart--"
"Nay, mate," interrupted Dick, "once I did; shall never forget it, when
I came to put my last bullet in, it was too big."
"Good Heavens!" I exclaimed, "what did you do?"
"Why, I put the bullet in my mouth, and kept chawing and chawing it,
and threatening the black devils all the while, until at last it was
small enough, and then I rammed it down, and dropped on my knee, and
waited until they came within twenty yards, and then I picked off
Captain Jack, the biggest villain of them all."
Here Dick, being warmed, continued the story: "We could not stop; we
marched all evening and all night, and when the two poor creturs cried
for water, as they did most of the night, as often as I could I filled
my boots, and gave them to drink. I led the horse, and traveled seventy
miles without halting for more than a minute or two. Toward the last
they were as helpless as worn-out sheep. I tied them on. We had the luck
to fall in with a party traveling just when the old mare was about
giving in, and then we must all have died for want of water. Charley
Anvils had eighteen wounds, but, except losing two fingers, is none the
worse. Poor Jemmy, there, will never be fit for any thing but a
hut-keeper; as for me, I had some scratches--nothing to hurt; and the
old mare lost an ear. I went back afterward with the police, and squared
accounts with the blacks.
"And so, you see, stranger, the old woman thinks I saved her old man's
life, although I would have done as much for any one; but I believe
there are some gentlemen in Sydney think I ought to have been hung for
what I did. Any how, since that scrimmage in the bush, they always call
me 'TWO-HANDED DICK.'"
[From Household Words.]
THE USES OF SORROW.
Oh, grieve not for the early dead,
Whom God himself hath taken;
But deck with flowers each holy bed--
Nor deem thyself forsaken,
When one by one, they fall away,
Who were to thee as summer day.
Weep for the babes of guilt, who sleep
With scanty rags stretch'd o'er them,
On the dark road, the downward steep
Of misery; while before them
Looms out afar the dreadful tree,
And solemn, sad Eternity!
Nor weep alone; but when to Heaven
The cords of sorrow bind thee,
Let kindest help to such be given
As God shall teach to find thee;
And, for the sake of those above,
Do deeds of Wisdom, Mercy, Love.
The child that sicken'd on thy knee,
Thou weeping Christian mother,
Had learn'd in this world, lispingly,
Words suited for another.
Oh, dost thou think, with pitying mind,
On untaught infants left behind?
BENJAMIN WEST.
BY LEIGH HUNT.
The two principal houses at which I visited, till the arrival of our
relations from the West Indies, were Mr. West's (late President of the
Royal Academy), in Newman-street, and Mr. Godfrey Thornton's (of the
distinguished city family), in Austin-Friars. How I loved the Graces in
one, and every thing in the other! Mr. West (who, as I have already
mentioned, had married one of my relations) had bought his house, I
believe, not long after he came to England; and he had added a gallery
at the back of it, terminating in a couple of lofty rooms. The gallery
was a continuation of the house-passage, and, together with one of those
rooms and the parlor, formed three sides of a garden, very small but
elegant, with a grass-plot in the middle, and busts upon stands under an
arcade. The gallery, as you went up it, formed an angle at a little
distance to the left, then another to the right and then took a longer
stretch into the two rooms; and it was hung with the artist's sketches
all the way. In a corner between the two angles was a study-door, with
casts of Venus and Apollo, on each side of it. The two rooms contained
the largest of his pictures; and in the farther one, after stepping
softly down the gallery, as if reverencing the dumb life on the walls,
you generally found the mild and quiet artist at his work; happy, for he
thought himself immortal.
I need not enter into the merits of an artist who is so well known, and
has been so often criticised. He was a man with regular, mild features;
and, though of Quaker origin, had the look of what he was, a painter to
a court. His appearance was so gentlemanly, that, the moment he changed
his gown for a coat, he seemed to be full-dressed. The simplicity and
self-possession of the young Quaker, not having time enough to grow
stiff (for he went early to study at Rome), took up, I suppose, with
more ease than most would have done, the urbanities of his new position.
And what simplicity helped him to, favor would retain. Yet this man, so
well bred, and so indisputably clever in his art (whatever might be the
amount of his genius), had received so careless, or so homely an
education when a boy, that he could hardly read. He pronounced also some
of his words, in reading, with a puritanical barbarism, such as _haive_
for _have_, as some people pronounce when they sing psalms. But this was
perhaps an American custom. My mother, who both read and spoke
remarkably well, would say _haive_, and _shaul_ (for _shall_), when she
sung her hymns. But it was not so well in reading lectures at the
Academy. Mr. West would talk of his art all day long, painting all the
while. On other subjects he was not so fluent; and on political and
religious matters he tried hard to maintain the reserve common with
those about a court. He succeeded ill in both. There were always strong
suspicions of his leaning to his native side in politics; and daring
Bonaparte's triumph, he could not contain his enthusiasm for the
Republican chief, going even to Paris to pay him his homage, when First
Consul. The admiration of high colors and powerful effects, natural to a
painter, was too strong for him. How he managed this matter with the
higher powers in England, I can not say. Probably he was the less
heedful, inasmuch as he was not very carefully paid. I believe he did a
great deal for George the Third with little profit. Mr. West certainly
kept his love for Bonaparte no secret; and it was no wonder, for the
latter expressed admiration of his pictures. The artist thought the
conqueror's smile enchanting, and that he had the handsomest leg he had
ever seen. He was present when the "Venus de Medicis" was talked of, the
French having just taken possession of her. Bonaparte, Mr. West said,
turned round to those about him, and said, with his eyes lit up, "She's
coming!" as if he had been talking of a living person. I believe he
retained for the emperor the love that he had had for the First Consul,
a wedded love, "for better, for worse." However, I believe also that he
retained it after the emperor's downfall; which is not what every
painter did.
PEACE
Peace has a dwelling near a river
Where the darkened waters quiver.
Where the ripple we can hear
Bursting on the pebbly shore,
Making music soft and clear
For evermore, for evermore.
Peace has a dwelling near a wood
Where the cooing pigeons brood,
Where the sweet-voiced nightingale
Unto the moon her song doth pour,
And songsters swell the echoing vale
For evermore, for evermore.
Peace has a dwelling in the soul
That can its hopes and fears control;
In silent wood or city's din
Alike it may be found to dwell;
Its dearest home is that within
The chastened heart's profoundest cell.
Peace has a dwelling where no more
The ear can hear the torrent roar,
Or lists the rippling of the river,
As softly it turns up its wave,
Where never more the moon-beams quiver
Within the silent grave.
Peace--oh, thou white-garmented
Maiden, with the flower-decked head,
Come, make thy mansion in my heart!
A tenant thou shalt freely rest,
And thou shalt soothe each bitter smart
That racks the chambers of my breast
CHARLES DRYDEN.
[From Household Words.]
ALCHEMY AND GUNPOWDER.
The day-dream of mankind has ever been the Unattainable. To sigh for
what is beyond our reach is, from infancy to age, a fixed condition of
our nature. To it we owe all the improvement that distinguishes
civilized from savage life--to it we are indebted for all the great
discoveries which, at long intervals, have rewarded thought.
Though the motives which stimulated the earliest inquiries were
frequently undefined, and, if curiously examined, would be found to be
sometimes questionable, it has rarely happened that the world has not
benefited by them in the end. Thus Astrology, which ascribed to the
stars an influence over the actions and destinies of man; Magic, which
attempted to reverse the laws of nature, and Alchemy, which aimed at
securing unlimited powers of self-reward; all tended to the final
establishment of useful science.
Of none of the sciences whose laws are fully understood, is this
description truer than of that now called Chemistry, which once was
Alchemy. That "knowledge of the substance or composition of bodies,"
which the Arabic root of both words implies, establishes a fact in place
of a chimera. Experimental philosophy has made Alchemy an impossible
belief, but the faith in it was natural in an age when reason was seldom
appealed to. The credulity which accepted witchcraft for a truth, was
not likely to reject the theory of the transmutation of metals, nor
strain at the dogma of perpetual youth and health; the concomitants of
the Philosopher's Stone.
The Alchemists claim for their science the remotest antiquity possible,
but it was not until three or four centuries after the Christian era
that the doctrine of transmutation began to spread. It was among the
Arabian physicians that it took root. Those learned men, through whom
was transmitted so much that was useful in astronomy, in mathematics,
and in medicine, were deeply tinctured with the belief in an universal
elixir, whose properties gave the power of multiplying gold, of
prolonging life indefinitely, and of making youth perpetual. The
discoveries which they made of the successful application of mercury in
many diseases, led them to suppose that this agent contained within
itself the germ of all curative influences, and was the basis of all
other metals. An Eastern imagination, ever prone to heighten the effects
of nature, was not slow to ascribe a preternatural force to this
medicine, but not finding it in its simple state, the practitioners of
the new science had recourse to combination, in the hope, by that means,
of attaining their object. To fix mercury became their first endeavor,
and this fixation they described as "catching the flying bird of
Hermes." Once embarked in the illusory experiment, it is easy to
perceive how far the Alchemists might be led; nor need it excite any
wonder that in pursuit of the ideal, they accidentally hit upon a good
deal that was real. The labors, therefore, of the Arabian physicians
were not thrown away, though they entangled the feet of science in
mazes, from which escape was only effected, after the lapse of centuries
of misdirected efforts.
From the period we have last spoken of, until the commencement of the
eleventh century, the only Alchemist of note is the Arabian Geber, who,
though he wrote on the perfections of metals, of the new-found art of
making gold, in a word, on the philosopher's stone, has only descended
to our times as the founder of that jargon which passes under the name
of "gibberish." He was, however, a great authority in the middle ages,
and allusions to "Geber's cooks," and "Geber's kitchen," are frequent
among those who at length saw the error of their ways, after wasting
their substance in the vain search for the elixir.
A longer interval might have elapsed but for the voice of Peter the
Hermit, whose fanatical scheme for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre
was the cause of that gradual absorption, by the nations of the West, of
the learning which had so long been buried in the East. The crusaders,
or those, rather, who visited the shores of Syria under their
protection--the men whose skill in medicine and letters rendered them
useful to the invading armies--acquired a knowledge of the Arabian
languages, and of the sciences cultivated by Arabian philosophers, and
this knowledge they disseminated through Europe. Some part of it, it is
true, was derived from the Moors in Spain, but it was all conveyed in a
common tongue which began now to be understood. To this era belong the
names of Alfonso the Wise, King of Castile; of Isaac Beimiram, the son
of Solomon the physician; of Hali Abbas, the scholar of Abimeher Moyses,
the son of Sejar; of Aben Sina, better known as Avicenna, and sometimes
called Abohali; of Averroes of Cordova, surnamed the Commentator; of
Rasis, who is also called Almanzor and Albumasar; and of John of
Damascus, whose name has been latinized into Johannes Damascenus. All
these, physicians by profession, were more or less professors of
alchemy; and besides these were such as Artephius, who wrote alchemical
tracts about the year 1130, but who deserves rather to be remembered for
the cool assertion which he makes in his "Wisdom of Secrets" that, at
the time he wrote he had reached the patriarchal--or fabulous--age of
one thousand and twenty-five years!
The thirteenth century came, and with it came two men who stand first,
as they then stood alone, in literary and scientific knowledge. One was
a German, the other an Englishman; the first was Albertus Magnus, the
last Roger Bacon.
Of the former, many wonderful stories are told: such, for instance, as
his having given a banquet to the king of the Romans, in the gardens of
his cloister at Cologne, when he converted the intensity of winter into
a season of summer, full of flowers and fruits, which disappeared when
the banquet was over; and his having constructed a marvelous automaton,
called "Androïs," which, like the invention of his contemporary, Roger
Bacon, was said to be capable of auguring all questions, past, present,
and to come.
To know more than the rest of the world in any respect, but particularly
in natural philosophy, was a certain method by which to earn the name of
a necromancer in the middle ages, and there are few whose occult fame
has stood higher than that of Roger Bacon. He was afraid, therefore, to
speak plainly--indeed, it was the custom of the early philosophers to
couch their knowledge in what Bacon himself calls the "tricks of
obscurity;" and in his celebrated "_Epistola de Secretis_," he adverts
to the possibility of his being obliged to do the same thing, through
"_the greatness of the secrets_ which he shall handle." With regard to
the invention of his greatest secret, we shall give the words in which
he speaks of the properties of gunpowder, and afterward show in what
terms he concealed his knowledge. _"Noyses_," he says, "_may be made in
the aire like thunders_, yea, with greater horror than those that come
of nature; _for a little matter fitted to the quantity of a thimble,
maketh a horrible noise and wonderful lightning_. And this is done after
sundry fashions, _whereby any citie or armie may be destroyed_." A more
accurate description of the explosion of gunpowder could scarcely be
given, and it is not to be supposed that Bacon simply confined himself
to the theory of his art, when he knew so well the consequences arising
from a practical application of it. On this head there is a legend
extant, which has not, to our knowledge, been printed before, from which
we may clearly see why he contented himself with the cabalistic form in
which he conveyed his knowledge of what he deemed a fatal secret.
Attached to Roger Bacon's laboratory, and a zealous assistant in the
manifold occupations with which the learned Franciscan occupied himself,
was a youthful student, whose name is stated to have been Hubert de
Dreux. He was a Norman, and many of the attributes of that people were
conspicuous in his character. He was of a quick intelligence, and hasty
courage, fertile in invention, and prompt in action, eloquent of
discourse, and ready of hand; all excellent qualities, to which was
superadded an insatiable curiosity. Docile to receive instruction, and
apt to profit by it, Hubert became a great favorite with the
philosopher, and to him Bacon expounded many of the secrets--or supposed
secrets--of the art which he strove to, bring to perfection. He
instructed him also in the composition of certain medicines, which Bacon
himself believed might be the means of prolonging life, though not to
the indefinite extent dreamed of by those who put their whole faith in
the Great Elixir.
But there never yet was an adept in any art or science who freely
communicated to his pupil the full amount of his own knowledge;
something for experience to gather, or for ingenuity to discover, is
always kept in reserve, and the instructions of Roger Bacon stopped
short at one point. He was himself engaged in the prosecution of that
chemical secret which he rightly judged to be a dangerous one, and,
while he experimented with the compound of sulphur, saltpetre, and
charcoal, he kept himself apart from his general laboratory, and wrought
in a separate cell, to which not even Hubert had access. To know that
the friar had a mysterious occupation, which, more than the making of
gold or the universal medicine, engrossed him, was enough of itself to
rouse the young man's curiosity; but when to this was added the fact,
that, from time to time, strange and mysterious noises were heard,
accompanied by bright corruscations and a new and singular odor,
penetrating through the chinks close to which his eyes were stealthily
riveted, Hubert's eagerness to know all that his master concealed had no
limit. He resolved to discover the secret, even though he should perish
in the attempt; he feared that there was good reason for the accusation
of dealing in the Black Art, which, more than all others, the monks of
Bacon's own convent countenanced, but this apprehension only stimulated
him the more. For some time Hubert waited without an opportunity
occurring for gratifying the secret longing of his heart; at last it
presented itself.
To afford medical assistance to the sick, was, perhaps, the most useful
practice of conventual life, and the monks had always among them
practitioners of the healing art, more or less skillful. Of this number,
Roger Bacon was the most eminent, not only in the monastery to which he
belonged, but in all Oxford.
It was about the hour of noon on a gloomy day toward the end of
November, in the year 1282, while the Friar and his pupil were severally
employed, the former in his secret cell, and the latter in the general
laboratory, that there arrived at the gate of the Franciscan convent a
messenger on horseback, the bearer of news from Abingdon, that Walter de
Losely, the sheriff of Berkshire, had that morning met with a serious
accident by a hurt from a lance, and was then lying dangerously wounded
at the hostelry of the Checkers in Abingdon, whither he had been hastily
conveyed. The messenger added, that the leech who had been called in was
most anxious for the assistance of the skillful Friar, Roger Bacon, and
urgently prayed that he would lose no time in coming to the aid of the
wounded knight.
Great excitement prevailed among the monks on the receipt of this
intelligence, for Walter de Losely was not only a man of power and
influence, but moreover, a great benefactor to their order. Friar Bacon
was immediately sought and speedily made his appearance, the urgency of
the message admitting of no delay. He hastily enjoined Hubert to
continue the preparation of an amalgam which he was desirous of getting
into a forward state, and taking with him his case of instruments with
the bandages and salves which he thought needful, was soon mounted on an
easy, ambling palfrey on his way toward Abingdon, the impatient
messenger riding before him to announce his approach.
When he was gone, quiet again reigned in the convent, and Hubert de
Dreux resumed his occupation. But it did not attract him long. Suddenly
he raised his head from the work and his eyes were lit up with a gleam
in which joy and fear seemed equally blended. For the first time, for
months, he was quite alone. What if he could obtain access to his
master's cell and penetrate the mystery in which his labors had been so
long enveloped! He cautiously stole to the door of the laboratory, and
peeped out into a long passage, at the further extremity of which a door
opened into a small court where, detached from the main edifice and
screened from all observation, was a small building which the Friar had
recently caused to be constructed. He looked about him timorously,
fearing lest he might be observed; but there was no cause for
apprehension, scarcely any inducement could have prevailed with the
superstitious Franciscans to turn their steps willingly in the direction
of Roger Bacon's solitary cell.
Reassured by the silence, Hubert stole noiselessly onward, and
tremblingly approached the forbidden spot. His quick eye saw at a glance
that the key was not in the door, and his countenance fell. The Friar's
treasure was locked up! He might see something, however, if he could not
enter the chamber. He knelt down, therefore, at the door, and peered
through the keyhole. As he pressed against the door, in doing so, it
yielded to his touch. In the haste with which Friar Bacon had closed the
entrance, the bolt had not been shot. Herbert rose hastily to his feet,
and the next moment he was in the cell, looking eagerly round upon the
crucibles and alembics, which bore witness to his master's labors. But
beyond a general impression of work in hand, there was nothing to be
gleaned from this survey. An open parchment volume, in which the Friar
had recently been writing, next caught his attention. If the secret
should be there in any known language. Hubert knew something of the
Hebrew, but nothing yet of Arabic. He was reassured; the characters were
familiar to him; the language Latin. He seized the volume, and read the
few lines which the Friar had just traced on the last page.
They ran thus:
"Videas tamen utrum loquar in ænigmate vel secundum veritatem." And,
further (which we translate): "He that would see these things shall have
the key that openeth and no man shutteth, and when he shall shut no man
is able to open again."
"But the secret--the secret!" cried Hubert, impatiently, "let me know
what 'these things' are!"
He hastily turned the leaf back and read again. The passage was that one
in the "_Epistola de Secretis_" which spoke of the artificial thunder
and lightning, and beneath it was the full and precise receipt for its
composition. This at once explained the strange noises and the flashes
of light which he had so anxiously noticed. Surprising and gratifying as
this discovery might be, there was, Hubert thought, something beyond.
Roger Bacon, he reasoned, was not one to practice an experiment like
this for mere amusement. It was, he felt certain, a new form of
invocation, more potent, doubtless, over the beings of another world,
than any charm yet recorded. Be it as it might, he would try whether,
from the materials around him, it were not in his power to produce the
same result.
"Here are all the necessary ingredients," he exclaimed; "this yellowish
powder is the well known sulphur, in which I daily bathe the
argent-vive; this bitter, glistening substance is the salt of the rock,
the _salis petræ_; and this black calcination, the third agent. But the
proportions are given, and here stands a glass cucurbit in which they
should be mingled. It is of the form my master mostly uses--round, with
a small neck and a narrow mouth, to be luted closely, without doubt. He
has often told me that the sole regenerating power of the universe is
heat; yonder furnace shall supply it, and then Hubert de Dreux is his
master's equal!"
* * * * *
The short November day was drawing to a close, when, after carefully
tending the wounded sheriff, and leaving such instructions with the
Abingdon leech as he judged sufficient for his patient's well-doing,
Roger Bacon again mounted his palfrey, and turned its head in the
direction of Oxford. He was unwilling to be a loiterer after dark, and
his beast was equally desirous to be once more comfortably housed, so
that his homeward journey was accomplished even more rapidly than his
morning excursion; and barely an hour had elapsed when the Friar drew
the rein at the foot of the last gentle eminence, close to which lay the
walls of the cloistered city. To give the animal breathing-space, he
rode quietly up the ascent, and then paused for a few moments before he
proceeded, his mind intent on subjects foreign to the speculations of
all his daily associations.
Suddenly, as he mused on his latest discovery and calculated to what
principal object it might be devoted, a stream of fiery light shot
rapidly athwart the dark, drear sky, and before he had space to think
what the meteor might portend, a roar as of thunder shook the air, and
simultaneous with it, a shrill, piercing scream, mingled with the
fearful sound; then burst forth a volume of flame, and on the wind came
floating a sulphurous vapor which, to him alone, revealed the nature of
the explosion he had just witnessed.
"Gracious God!" he exclaimed, while the cold sweat poured like
rain-drops down his forehead, "the fire has caught the fulminating
powder! But what meant that dreadful cry? Surely nothing of human life
has suffered! The boy Hubert--but, no--he was at work at the further
extremity of the building. But this is no time for vain, conjecture--let
me learn the worst at once!"
And with these words he urged his affrighted steed to its best pace, and
rode rapidly into the city.
All was consternation there: the tremendous noise had roused every
inhabitant, and people were hurrying to and fro, some hastening toward
the place from whence the sound had proceeded, others rushing wildly
from it. It was but too evident that a dreadful catastrophe, worse even
than Bacon dreaded, had happened. It was with difficulty he made his way
through the crowd, and came upon the ruin which still blazed fiercely,
appalling the stoutest of heart. There was a tumult of voices, but above
the outcries of the affrighted monks, and of the scared multitude, rose
the loud voice of the Friar, calling upon them to extinguish the flames.
This appeal turned all eyes toward him, and then associating him with an
evil, the cause of which they were unable to comprehend, the
maledictions of the monks broke forth.
"Seize the accursed magician," they shouted; "he has made a fiery
compact with the demon! Already one victim is sacrificed--our turn will
come next! See, here are the mangled limbs of his pupil, Hubert de
Dreux! The fiend has claimed his reward, and borne away his soul. Seize
on the wicked sorcerer, and take him to a dungeon!"
Roger Bacon sate stupefied by the unexpected blow; he had no power, if
he had possessed the will, to offer the slightest resistance to the fury
of the enraged Franciscans, who, in the true spirit of ignorance, had
ever hated him for his acquirements. With a deep sigh for the fate of
the young man, whose imprudence he now saw had been the cause of this
dreadful event, he yielded himself up to his enemies; they tore him from
his palfrey, and with many a curse, and many a buffet, dragged him to
the castle, and lodged him in one of its deepest dungeons.
The flames from the ruined cell died out of themselves; but those which
the envy and dread of Bacon's genius had kindled, were never
extinguished, but with his life.
In the long years of imprisonment which followed--the doom of the stake
being averted only by powerful intercession with the Pope--Bacon had
leisure to meditate on the value of all he had done to enlarge the
understanding and extend the knowledge of his species. "The prelates and
friars," he wrote in a letter which still remains, "have kept me
starving in close prison, nor will they suffer any one to come to me,
fearing lest my writings should come to any other than the Pope and
themselves."
He reflected that of all living men he stood well-nigh alone in the
consciousness that in the greatest of his inventions he had produced a
discovery of incalculable value, but one for which on every account the
time was not ripe.
"I will not die," he said, "without leaving to the world the evidence
that the secret was known to me whose marvelous power future ages shall
acknowledge. But not yet shall it be revealed. Generations must pass
away and the minds of men become better able to endure the light of
science, before they can profit by my discovery. Let him who already
possesses knowledge, guess the truth these words convey."
And in place of the directions by which Hubert de Dreux had been guided,
he altered the sentence as follows:
"Sed tamen salis petre,
LURU MONE CAP UBRE
et sulphuris."
The learned have found that these mystical words conceal the anagram of
_Carbonum pulvere_, the third ingredient in the composition of
Gunpowder.
[From a Month at Constantinople.]
GLIMPSES OF THE EAST.
BY ALBERT SMITH.
A TURKISH BATH.--The second day I was at Constantinople I had a bath, in
the proper Turkish fashion; and this was quite as novel in its way as
every thing else had been. The establishment patronized was the head one
in Stamboul; and we went from the street into a very large hall,
entirety of marble, with a gallery round the walls, in which were
couches, as well as down below. On these different visitors were
reposing: some covered up and lying quite still, others smoking
narghilés, and drinking coffee. Towels and cloths were drying on lines,
and in the corner was a little shed, serving as a Câfé.
We went up-stairs and undressed, giving our watches and money to the
attendant, who tied our clothes up in a bundle. He then tucked a colored
wrapper round our waists, and threw a towel over our shoulders, after
which we walked down stairs, and put on some wooden clogs at the door of
the next apartment. The first thing these did was to send me head over
heels, to the great discomfiture of my temporary costume, and equal
delight of the bathers there assembled. We remained in this room, which
was of an increased temperature, idling upon other couches, until we
were pronounced ready to go into the second chamber. I contrived, with
great care and anxiety, to totter into it upon my clogs, and found
another apartment of marble, very warm indeed, and lighted from the top
by a dome of glass "bull's-eyes." In the middle of this chamber was a
hot, raised octagon platform, also of marble, and in the recesses of the
sides were marble vases, and tanks, with taps for hot and cold water,
and channels in the floor to carry off the suds. Two savage, unearthly
boys, their heads all shaved, with the exception of a tuft on the top,
and in their scant costume of a towel only, looking more like wild
Indians than Turks, now seized hold of me, and forcing me back upon the
hot marble floor commenced a dreadful series of tortures, such as I had
only read of as pertaining to the dark ages. It was of no use to resist.
They clutched hold of the back of my neck, and I thought they were going
to strangle me; then they pulled at my arms and legs, and I thought
again they were going to put me on the rack; and lastly, when they both
began to roll backward and forward on my chest, doubling my cracking
elbows underneath them, I thought, finally, that my last minute was
come, and that death by suffocation would finish me. They were fiends,
and evidently delighted in my agony; not allowing me to look to the
right or left after my companions, and throwing themselves on me again,
whenever they conceived I was going to call the dragoman to my
assistance. I do not know that I ever passed such a frightful five
minutes, connected with bathing, nervous as are some of the feelings
which that pastime gives rise to. It is very terrible to take the first
summer plunge into a deep, dark river and when you are at the bottom,
and the water is roaring in your ears, to think of dead bodies and
crocodiles; it is almost worse to make that frightful journey down a
steep beach, in a bathing machine, with a vague incertitude as to where
you will find yourself when the doors open again: but nothing can come
up to what I suffered in my last extremity, in this Constantinople bath.
Thoughts of Turkish cruelty and the sacks of the Bosphorus; of home, and
friends, and my childhood's bowers--of the sadness of being murdered in
a foreign bath--and the probability of my Giaour body being eaten by the
wild dogs, crowded rapidly on me, as these demons increased their
tortures; until, collecting all my strength for one last effort, I
contrived to throw them off, one to the right and the other to the left,
some half dozen feet--and regained my legs.
The worst was now over, certainly; but the persecution still continued
sufficiently exciting. They seized on me again, and led me to the tanks,
where they almost flayed me with horse-hair gloves, and drowned me with
bowls of warm water, poured continuously on my head. I could not see,
and if I again tried to cry out, they thrust a large soapy swab, made of
the fibres that grow at the foot of the date palm, into my mouth,
accompanying each renewed act of cruelty with a demand for _baksheesh_.
At last, being fairly exhausted, themselves, they swathed me in a great
many towels; and I was then half carried, half pushed, up stairs again,
where I took my place upon my couch with feelings of great joy and
thankfulness.
I now began to think that all the horrors I had undergone were balanced
by the delicious feeling of repose that stole over me. I felt that I
could have stopped there forever, with the fragrant coffee steaming at
my side, and the soothing bubble of the _narghilés_ sounding in every
direction. I went off into a day dream--my last clear vision being that
of a man having his head shaved all but a top knot, which was long
enough to twist round and round, under his fez--and could scarcely
believe that an hour had elapsed, when the dragoman suggested our return
to the bustling world without.
* * * * *
THE SLAVE MARKET AT CONSTANTINOPLE.--No European goes to the East with a
clear idea of a Slave-market. He has seen fanciful French lithographs,
and attractive scenes in Eastern ballets, where the pretty girls
appeared ready, on the shortest notice, and in the most bewitching
costumes, to dance the Gitana, Romaika, Tarantella, Redowa, or any other
characteristic _pas_ that might be required of them. Or if not schooled
into these impressions, he takes the indignant view of the subject, and
thinks of nothing but chains and lashes, and finds, at last, that one is
just as false as the other.
There is now no regular slave-market at Constantinople. The fair
Circassians and Georgians reside in the houses of the merchants, to whom
many of them are regularly consigned by their friends, and of these it
is impossible for a Frank to obtain a glimpse, for the usual privacy of
the harem is granted to them. The chief dépôt of the blacks is in a
large court-yard attached to the Mosque of Suleyman. In a street
immediately outside the wall was a row of coffee-houses, where opium,
was also to be procured for smoking, which is by no means so general a
practice as is imagined; and over and behind these were buildings in
which the slaves were kept. It is true that these were grated, but the
lattices through which only the Turkish women can look abroad, gave a
far greater notion of imprisonment.
There were a great many women and children grouped about in the
court-yard, and all those who appeared to possess any degree of
intelligence were chatting and laughing. Some were wrapped up in
blankets and crouching about in corners: but in these, sense and feeling
seemed to be at the lowest ebb. I should be very sorry to run against
any proper feelings on the subject, but I do honestly believe that if
any person of average propriety and right-mindedness were shown these
creatures, and told that their lot was to become the property of others,
and work in return for food and lodging, he would come to the conclusion
that it was all they were fit for--indeed, he might think that they had
gained in exchanging their wretched savage life for one of comparative
civilization. I would not pretend, upon the strength of a hurried visit
to a city, to offer the slightest opinion upon the native domestic and
social economy; but I can say, that whenever I have seen the black
slaves abroad, they have been neatly dressed, and apparently well kept;
and that, if shopping with their mistresses in the bazaars, the
conversation and laughing that passed between them was like that between
two companions. The truth is that the "virtuous indignation" side of the
question holds out grander opportunities to an author for fine writing
than the practical fact. But this style of composition should not always
be implicitly relied upon; I knew a man who was said by certain reviews
and literary _cliques_ to be "a creature of large sympathies for the
poor and oppressed," because he wrote touching things about them; but
who would abuse his wife, and brutally treat his children, and harass
his family, and then go and drink until his large heart was sufficiently
full to take up the "man-and-brother" line of literary business, and
suggest that a tipsy chartist was as good as a quiet gentleman. Of this
class are the writers who even call livery "a badge of slavery," and
yet, in truth, if the real slave felt as proud of his costume and calves
as John feels, he might be considerably envied for his content by many
of us.
As we entered the court-yard, a girl rose and asked Demetri if I wanted
to buy her. I told him to say that I did, and would take her to England.
She asked Demetri where that was, and on being told that it was so many
days' journey, she ran away, declaring that she would never go so far
with any body. We next went up to a circle of black females, who had
clustered under the shade of a tree. A Turkish woman in her vail was
talking to them. I made Demetri tell them that we had no slaves in
England, as our queen did not allow it, but that every one was free as
soon as they touched the land. This statement excited a laugh of the
loudest derision from all the party, and they ran to tell it to their
companions, who screamed with laughter as well; so that I unwittingly
started a fine joke that day in the slave-market.
* * * * *
DOGS IN CONSTANTINOPLE.--After an hour's doze I woke up again, and went
and sat by the window. The noise I then heard I shall never forget.
To say that if all the sheep-dogs going to Smithfield on a market-day
had been kept on the constant bark, and pitted against the yelping curs
upon all the carts in London, they could have given any idea of the
canine uproar that now first astonished me, would be to make the
feeblest of images. The whole city rang with one vast riot. Down below
me at Tophané--over at Stamboul--far away at Scutari--the whole eighty
thousand dogs that are said to overrun Constantinople, appeared engaged
in the most active extermination of each other, without a moment's
cessation. The yelping, howling, barking, growling, and snarling, were
all merged into one uniform and continuous, even sound, as the noise of
frogs becomes when heard at a distance. For hours there was no lull. I
went to sleep, and woke again, and still, with my windows open, I heard
the same tumult going on: nor was it until daybreak that any thing like
tranquillity was restored. In spite of my early instruction, the dogs
delight to bark and bite, and should be allowed to do so, it being their
nature, I could not help wishing that, for a short season, the power was
vested in me to carry out the most palpable service for which brickbats
and the Bosphorus could be made conjointly available.
Going out in the day-time, it is not difficult to find traces of the
fights of the night, about the limbs of all the street-dogs. There is
not one, among their vast number, in the enjoyment of a perfect skin.
Some have their ears gnawed away or pulled off; others have had their
eyes taken out; from the backs and haunches of others, perfect steaks of
flesh have been torn away; and all bear the scars of desperate combats.
Wild and desperate as is their nature, these poor animals are
susceptible of kindness. If a scrap of bread is thrown to one of them
now and then, he does not forget it; for they have, at times, a hard
matter to live--not the dogs among the shops of Galata or Stamboul, but
those whose "parish" lies in the large burying-grounds and desert-places
without the city; for each keeps, or rather is kept, to his district;
and if he chanced to venture into a strange one, the odds against his
return would be very large. One battered old animal, to whom I used
occasionally to toss a scrap of food, always followed me from the hotel
to the cross-street at Pera, where the two soldiers stand on guard, but
would never come beyond this point. He knew the fate that awaited him
had he done so; and therefore, when I left him, he would lie down in the
road and go to sleep until I came back. When a horse or camel dies, and
is left about the roads near the city, the bones are soon picked very
clean by these dogs, and they will carry the skulls or pelves to great
distances. I was told that they will eat their dead fellows--a curious
fact, I believe, in canine economy. They are always troublesome--not to
say dangerous--at night; and are especially irritated by Europeans, whom
they will single out among a crowd of Levantines.
[From the Autobiography of Leigh Hunt.]
CHRIST-HOSPITAL WORTHIES.
Christ-Hospital is a nursery of tradesmen, of merchants, of naval
officers, of scholars; it has produced some of the greatest ornaments of
their time; and the feeling among the boys themselves is, that it is a
medium, between the patrician pretension of such schools as Eton the
Westminster, and the plebeian submission of and charity schools. In
point of University honors, it claims to be equal with the best; and
though other schools can show a greater abundance of eminent names, I
know not where many will be found who are a greater host in themselves.
One original author is worth a hundred transmitters of elegance; and
such a one is to be found in Richardson, who here received what
education he possessed. Here Camden also received the rudiments of his.
Bishop Stillingfleet, according to the memoirs of Pepys, lately
published, was brought up in the school. We have had many eminent
scholars, two of them Greek professors, to wit, Barnes, and the present
Mr. Scholefield, the latter of whom attained an extraordinary succession
of University honors. The rest are Markland; Middleton, late Bishop of
Calcutta; and Mitchell, the translator of "Aristophanes."
Christ-Hospital, I believe, toward the close of the last century, and
the beginning of the present, sent out more living writers, in its
proportion, than any other school. There was Dr. Richards, author of the
"Aboriginal Britons;" Dyer, whose life was one unbroken dream of
learning and goodness, and who used to make us wonder with passing
through the school-room (where no other person in "town-clothes" ever
appeared) to consult books in the library; Le Grice, the translator of
"Longus;" Horne, author of some well-known productions in controversial
divinity; Surr, the novelist (not in the Grammar school); James White,
the friend of Charles Lamb, and not unworthy of him, author of
"Falstaff's Letters" (this was he who used to give an anniversary dinner
to the chimney-sweepers, merrier than, though not so magnificent as Mrs.
Montague's); Pitman, a celebrated preacher, editor of some school-books,
and religious classics; Mitchell, before mentioned; myself, who stood
next him; Barnes, who came next, the editor of the "Times," than whom no
man (if he had cared for it) could have been more certain of obtaining
celebrity for wit and literature; Townsend, a prebendary of Durham,
author of "Armageddon," and several theological works; Gilly, another of
the Durham prebendaries, who wrote the "Narrative of the Waldenses;"
Seargill, a Unitarian minister, author of some tracts on Peace and War,
&c.; and lastly, whom I have kept by way of climax, Coleridge and
Charles Lamb, two of the most original geniuses, not only of the day,
but of the country. We have had an embassador among us; but as he, I
understand, is ashamed of us, we are hereby more ashamed of him, and
accordingly omit him.
Coleridge I never saw till he was old. Lamb I recollect coming to see
the boys, with a pensive, brown, handsome, and kindly face, and a gait
advancing with a motion from side to side, between involuntary
consciousness and attempted ease. His brown complexion may have been
owing to a visit in the country; his air of uneasiness to a great burden
of sorrow. He dressed with a quaker-like plainness. I did not know him
as Lamb: I took him for a Mr. "Guy," having heard somebody address him
by that appellative, I suppose in jest.
Every upper boy at school appears a giant to a little one. "Big boy" and
senior are synonymous. Now and then, however, extreme smallness in a
senior scholar gives a new kind of dignity, by reason of the testimony
it bears to the ascendency of the intellect. It was the custom for the
monitors at Christ-Hospital, during prayers before meat, to stand
fronting the tenants of their respective wards, while the objects of
their attention were kneeling. Looking up, on one of these occasions,
toward a new monitor who was thus standing, and whose face was unknown
to me (for there were six hundred of us, and his ward was not mine), I
thought him the smallest boy that could ever have attained to so
distinguished an eminence. He was little in person, little in face, and
he had a singularly juvenile cast of features, even for one so _petite_.
It was MITCHELL, the translator of Aristophanes. He had really attained
his position prematurely. I rose afterward to be next to him in the
school; and from a grudge that existed between us, owing probably to a
reserve, which I thought pride, on his part, and to an ardency which he
may have considered frivolous on mine, we became friends. Circumstances
parted us in after life: I became a reformist, and he a quarterly
reviewer; but he sent me kindly remembrances not long before he died. I
did not know he was declining; and it will ever be a pain to me to
reflect, that delay conspired with accident to hinder my sense of it
from being known to him, especially as I learned that he had not been so
prosperous as I supposed. He had his weaknesses as well as myself, but
they were mixed with conscientious and noble qualities. Zealous as he
was for aristocratical government, he was no indiscriminate admirer of
persons in high places; and, though it would have bettered his views in
life, he had declined taking orders, from nicety of religious scruple.
Of his admirable scholarship I need say nothing.
Equally good scholar, but of a less zealous temperament was BARNES, who
stood next me on the deputy-Grecian form, and who was afterward
identified with the sudden and striking increase of the _Times_
newspaper in fame and influence. He was very handsome when young, with a
profile of Grecian regularity; and was famous among us for a certain
dispassionate humor, for his admiration of the works of Fielding, and
for his delight, nevertheless, in pushing a narrative to its utmost, and
drawing upon his stores of fancy for intensifying it; an amusement for
which he possessed an understood privilege. It was painful in after life
to see his good looks swallowed up in corpulency, and his once handsome
mouth thrusting its under lip out, and panting with asthma. I believe he
was originally so well constituted, in point of health and bodily
feeling, that he fancied he could go on all his life without taking any
of the usual methods to preserve his comfort. The editorship of the
_Times_, which turned his night into day, and would have been a trying
burden to any man, completed the bad consequences of his negligence, and
he died painfully before he was old. Barnes wrote elegant Latin verse, a
classical English style, and might assuredly have made himself a name in
wit and literature, had he cared much for any thing beyond his glass of
wine and his Fielding.
What pleasant days have I not passed with him, and other schoolfellows,
bathing in the New River, and boating on the Thames. He and I began to
learn Italian together; and any body not within the pale of the
enthusiastic, might have thought us mad, as we went shouting the
beginning of Metastasio's ode to Venus, as loud as we could bawl, over
the Hornsey-fields.
LEIGH HUNT DROWNING.
At Oxford, my love of boating had nearly cost me my life. I had already
had a bit of a taste of drowning in the river Thames, in consequence of
running a boat too hastily on shore; but it was nothing to what I
experienced on this occasion. The schoolfellow whom I was visiting was
the friend whose family lived in Spring Gardens. We had gone out in a
little decked skiff, and not expecting disasters in the gentle Isis, I
had fastened the sail-line, of which I had the direction, in order that
I might read a volume which I had with me, of Mr. Cumberland's novel
called "Henry." My friend was at the helm. The wind grew a little
strong, and we had just got into Iffley Reach, when I heard him exclaim,
"Hunt, we are over!" The next moment I was under the water, gulping it,
and giving myself up for lost. The boat had a small opening in the
middle of the deck, under which I had thrust my feet; this circumstance
had carried me over with the boat, and the worst of it was, I found I
had got the sail-line round my neck. My friend, who sat on the deck
itself, had been swept off, and got comfortably to shore, which was at a
little distance.
My bodily sensations were not so painful as I should have fancied they
would have been. My mental reflections were very different, though one
of them, by a singular meeting of extremes, was of a comic nature. I
thought that I should never see the sky again, that I had parted with
all my friends, and that I was about to contradict the proverb which
said that a man who was born to be hung would never be drowned; for the
sail-line, in which I felt entangled, seemed destined to perform for me
both the offices. On a sudden, I found an oar in my hand, and the next
minute I was climbing, with assistance, into a wherry, in which there
sat two Oxonians, one of them helping me, and loudly and laughingly
differing with the other, who did not at all like the rocking of the
boat, and who assured me, to the manifest contradiction of such senses
as I had left, that there was no room. This gentleman is now no more,
and I shall not mention his name, because I might do injustice to the
memory of a brave man struck with a panic. The name of his companion, if
I mistake not, was Russell. I hope he was related to an illustrious
person of the same name, to whom I have lately been indebted for what
may have been another prolongation of my life.
On returning to town, which I did on the top of an Oxford coach, I was
relating this story to the singular person who then drove it (Bobart,
who had been a collegian), when a man who was sitting behind surprised
us with the excess of his laughter. On asking him the reason, he touched
his hat, and said, "Sir, I'm his footman." Such were the delicacies of
the livery, and the glorifications of their masters with which they
entertain the kitchen.--_From the Autobiography of Leigh Hunt._
WILLIAM PITT.
BY S. T. COLERIDGE.
The following very graphic and very severe critical estimate of WILLIAM
PITT, the great Prime Minister of England during the stormy era of the
French Revolution, was written by COLERIDGE for the London Morning Post,
with which he was then connected. It appeared in the number of that
paper, dated Wednesday, March 19, 1800. We copy it from COLERIDGE'S
"Essays on His Own Times," just published in London.
* * * * *
PLUTARCH, in his comparative biography of Rome and Greece, has generally
chosen for each pair of lives the two contemporaries who most nearly
resemble each other. His work would, perhaps have been more interesting,
if he had adopted the contrary arrangement and selected those rather,
who had attained to the possession of similar influence or similar fame,
by means, actions, and talents, the most dissimilar. For power is the
sole object of philosophical attention in man, as in inanimate nature:
and in the one equally as in the other, we understand it more
intimately, the more diverse the circumstances are with which we have
observed it co-exist. In our days the two persons, who appear to have
influenced the interests and actions of men the most deeply and the most
diffusively are beyond doubt the Chief Consul of France, and the Prime
Minister of Great Britain; and in these two are presented to us similar
situations with the greatest dissimilitude of characters.
William Pitt was the younger son of Lord Chatham; a fact of no ordinary
importance in the solution of his character, of no mean significance in
the heraldry of morals and intellect. His father's rank, fame, political
connections, and parental ambition were his mould; he was cast, rather
than grew. A palpable election, a conscious predestination controlled
the free agency, and transfigured the individuality of his mind; and
that, which he _might have been_, was compelled into that, which he _was
to be_. From his early childhood it was his father's custom to make him
stand up on a chair, and declaim before a large company; by which
exercise, practiced so frequently, and continued for so many years, he
acquired a premature and unnatural dexterity in the combination of
words, which must of necessity have diverted his attention from present
objects, obscured his impressions, and deadened his genuine feelings.
Not the _thing_ on which he was speaking, but the praises to be gained
by the speech, were present to his intuition; hence he associated all
the operations of his faculties with words, and his pleasures with the
surprise excited by them.
But an inconceivably large portion of human knowledge and human power is
involved in the science and management of _words_; and an education of
words, though it destroys genius, will often create, and always foster,
talent. The young Pitt was conspicuous far beyond his fellows, both at
school and at college. He was always full grown: he had neither the
promise nor the awkwardness of a growing intellect. Vanity, early
satiated, formed and elevated itself into a love of power; and in losing
this colloquial vanity he lost one of the prime links that connect the
individual with the species, too early for the affections, though not
too early for the understanding. At college he was a severe student; his
mind was founded and elemented in words and generalities, and these too
formed all the superstructure. That revelry and that debauchery, which
are so often fatal to the powers of intellect, would probably have been
serviceable to him; they would have given him a closer communion with
realities, they would have induced a greater presentness to present
objects. But Mr. Pitt's conduct was correct, unimpressibly correct. His
after-discipline in the special pleader's office, and at the bar,
carried on the scheme of his education with unbroken uniformity. His
first political connections were with the Reformers, but those who
accuse him of sympathizing or coalescing with their intemperate or
visionary plans, misunderstand his character, and are ignorant of the
historical facts. Imaginary situations in an imaginary state of things
rise up in minds that possess a power and facility in combining images.
Mr. Pitt's ambition was conversant with old situations in the old state
of things, which furnish nothing to the imagination, though much to the
wishes. In his endeavors to realize his father's plan of reform, he was
probably as sincere as a being, who had derived so little knowledge from
actual impressions, could be. But his sincerity had no living root of
affection; while it was propped up by his love of praise and immediate
power, so long it stood erect and no longer. He became a member of the
Parliament--supported the popular opinions, and in a few years, by the
influence of the popular party, was placed in that high and awful rank
in which he now is. The fortunes of his country, we had almost said, the
fates of the world, were placed in his wardship--we sink in prostration
before the inscrutable dispensations of Providence, when we reflect in
whose wardship the fates of the world were placed!
The influencer of his country and of his species was a young man, the
creature of another's predetermination, sheltered and weather-fended
from all the elements of experience; a young man, whose feet had never
wandered; whose very eye had never turned to the right or to the left;
whose whole track had been as curveless as the motion of a fascinated
reptile! It was a young man, whose heart was solitary, because he had
existed always amidst objects of futurity, and whose imagination, too,
was unpopulous, because those objects of hope, to which his habitual
wishes had transferred, and as it were _projected_, his existence, were
all familiar and long established objects! A plant sown and reared in a
hot-house, for whom the very air that surrounded him, had been regulated
by the thermometer of previous purpose; to whom the light of nature had
penetrated only through glasses and covers; who had had the sun without
the breeze; whom no storm had shaken; on whom no rain had pattered; on
whom the dews of heaven had not fallen! A being, who had had no feelings
connected with man or nature, no spontaneous impulses, no unbiased and
desultory studies, no genuine science, nothing that constitutes
individuality in intellect, nothing that teaches brotherhood in
affection! Such was the man--such, and so denaturalized the spirit--on
whose wisdom and philanthropy the lives and living enjoyments of so many
millions of human beings were made unavoidably dependent. From this time
a real enlargement of mind became almost impossible. Pre-occupations,
intrigue, the undue passion and anxiety with which all facts must be
surveyed; the crowd and confusion of those facts, none of them seen, but
all communicated, and by that very circumstance, and by the necessity of
perpetually classifying them, transmuted into words and generalities;
pride, flattery, irritation, artificial power; these, and circumstances
resembling these, necessarily render the heights of office barren
heights, which command, indeed, a vast and extensive prospect, but
attract so many clouds and vapors, that most often all prospect is
precluded. Still, however, Mr. Pitt's situation, however inauspicious
for his real being, was favorable to his fame. He heaped period on
period; persuaded himself and the nation, that extemporaneous
arrangement of sentences was eloquence; and that eloquence implied
wisdom. His father's struggles for freedom, and his own attempts, gave
him an almost unexampled popularity; and his office necessarily
associated with his name all the great events, that happened during his
administration. There were not, however, wanting men, who saw through
this delusion; and refusing to attribute the industry, integrity, and
enterprising spirit of our merchants, the agricultural improvements of
our land-holders, the great inventions of our manufacturers, or the
valor and skillfulness of our sailors to the merits of a minister, they
have continued to decide on his character from those acts and those
merits, which belong to him and to him alone. Judging him by this
standard, they have been able to discover in him no one proof or symptom
of a commanding genius. They have discovered him never controlling,
never creating events, but always yielding to them with rapid change,
and sheltering himself from inconsistency by perpetual indefiniteness.
In the Russian war, they saw him abandoning meanly what he had planned
weakly, and threatened insolently. In the debates on the Regency, they
detected the laxity of his constitutional principles, and received
proofs that his eloquence consisted not in the ready application of a
general system to particular questions, but in the facility of arguing
for or against any question by specious generalities, without reference
to any system. In these debates, he combined what is most dangerous in
democracy, with all that is most degrading in the old superstitions of
monarchy; and taught an inherency of the office in the person, in order
to make the office itself a nullity, and the Premiership, with its
accompanying majority, the sole and permanent power of the State. And
now came the French Revolution. This was a new event; the old routine of
reasoning, the common trade of politics were to become obsolete. He
appeared wholly unprepared for it: half favoring, half condemning,
ignorant of what he favored, and why he condemned, he neither displayed
the honest enthusiasm and fixed principle of Mr. Fox, nor the intimate
acquaintance with the general nature of man, and the consequent.
_prescience_ of Mr. Burke.
After the declaration of war, long did he continue in the common cant of
office, in declamation about the Scheldt and Holland, and all the vulgar
causes of common contests! and when at last the immense genius of his
new supporter had beat him out of these _words_ (words signifying
_places_ and _dead objects_, and signifying nothing more), he adopted
other words in their places, other generalities--Atheism and
Jacobinism--phrases, which he learned from Mr. Burke, but without
learning the philosophical definitions and involved consequences, with
which that great man accompanied those words. Since the death of Mr.
Burke, the forms and the sentiments, and the tone of the French have
undergone many and important changes: how, indeed, is it possible that
it should be otherwise, while man is the creature of experience! But
still Mr. Pitt proceeds in an endless repetition of the same _general
phrases_. This is his element; deprive him of general and abstract
phrases, and you reduce him to silence. But you can not deprive him of
them. Press him to specify an _individual_ fact of advantage to be
derived from a war, and he answers, Security! Call upon him to
particularize a crime, and he exclaims, Jacobinism! Abstractions defined
by abstractions! Generalities defined by generalities! As a minister of
finance, he is still, as ever, the man of words and abstractions!
Figures, custom-house reports, imports and exports, commerce and
revenue--all flourishing, all splendid! Never was such a prosperous
country, as England, under his administration! Let it be objected, that
the agriculture of the country is, by the overbalance of commerce, and
by various and complex causes, in such a state, that the country hangs
as a pensioner for bread on its neighbors, and a bad season uniformly
threatens us with famine. This (it is replied) is owing to our
PROSPERITY--all _prosperous_ nations are in great distress for
food!--still PROSPERITY, still GENERAL PHRASES, uninforced by one
_single image_, one _single fact_ of real national amelioration; of any
one comfort enjoyed, where it was not before enjoyed; of any one class
of society becoming healthier, wiser, or happier. These are _things_,
these are realities; and these Mr. Pitt has neither the imagination to
body forth, nor the sensibility to feel for. Once, indeed, in an evil
hour, intriguing for popularity, he suffered himself to be persuaded to
evince a talent for the Real, the Individual; and he brought in his POOR
BILL!! When we hear the minister's talent for finance so loudly
trumpeted, we turn involuntarily to his POOR BILL--to that acknowledged
abortion--that unanswerable evidence of his ignorance respecting all the
fundamental relations and actions of property, and of the social union!
As his reasonings, even so is his eloquence. One character pervades his
whole being. Words on words, finely arranged, and so dexterously
consequent, that the whole bears the semblance of argument, and still
keeps awake a sense of surprise; but when all is done, nothing
rememberable has been said; no one philosophical remark, no one image,
not even a pointed aphorism. Not a sentence of Mr. Pitt's has ever been
quoted, or formed the favorite phrase of the day--a thing unexampled in
any man of equal reputation. But while he speaks, the effect varies
according to the character of his auditor. The man of no talent is
swallowed up in surprise; and when the speech is ended, he remembers his
feelings, but nothing distinct of that which produced them--(how
opposite an effect to that of nature and genius, from whose works the
idea still remains, when the feeling is passed away--remains to connect
itself with the other feelings, and combine with new impressions!) The
mere man of talent hears him with admiration--the mere man of genius
with contempt--the philosopher neither admires nor contemns, but listens
to him with a deep and solemn interest, tracing in the effects of his
eloquence the power of words and phrases, and that peculiar constitution
of human affairs in their present state, which so eminently favors this
power.
Such appears to us to be the prime minister of Great Britain, whether we
consider him as a statesman or as an orator. The same character betrays
itself in his private life; the same coldness to realities, and to all
whose excellence relates to reality. He has patronized no science, he
has raised no man of genius from obscurity; he counts no one prime work
of God among his friends. From the same source he has no attachment to
female society, no fondness for children, no perceptions of beauty in
natural scenery; but he is fond of convivial indulgences, of that
stimulation, which, keeping up the glow of self-importance and the sense
of internal power, gives feelings without the mediation of ideas.
These are the elements of his mind; the accidents of his fortune, the
circumstances that enabled such a mind to acquire and retain such a
power, would form a subject of a philosophical history, and that, too,
of no scanty size. We can scarcely furnish the chapter of contents to a
work, which would comprise subjects so important and delicate, as the
causes of the diffusion and intensity of secret influence; the machinery
and state intrigue of marriages; the overbalance of the commercial
interest; the panic of property struck by the late revolution; the
short-sightedness of the careful; the carelessness of the fat-sighted;
and all those many and various events which have given to a decorous
profession of religion, and a seemliness of private morals, such an
unwonted weight in the attainment and preservation of public power. We
are unable to determine whether it be more consolatary or humiliating to
human nature, that so many complexities of event, situation, character,
age, and country, should be necessary in order to the production of a
Mr. Pitt.
[From Household Words.]
IGNORANCE OF THE ENGLISH.
The lamentable deficiency of the commonest rudiments of education, which
still exists among the humbler classes of the nation, is never so darkly
apparent as when we compare their condition with that of people of
similar rank in other countries. When we do so, we find that England
stands the lowest in the scale of what truly must be looked upon as
_Civilization_; for she provides fewer means for promoting it than any
of her neighbors. With us, education is a commodity to be trafficked in:
abroad, it is a duty. Here, schoolmasters are perfectly irresponsible
except to their paymasters; in other countries, teachers are appointed
by the state, and a rigid supervision is maintained over the trainers of
youth, both as regards competency and moral conduct. In England, whoever
is too poor to buy the article education, can get none of it for himself
or his offspring; in other parts of Europe, either the government (as in
Germany), or public opinion (as in America), enforces it upon the
youthful population.
What are the consequences? One is revealed by a comparison between the
proportion of scholars in elementary schools to the entire population of
other countries, and that in our own. Taking the whole of northern
Europe--including Scotland, and France, and Belgium (where education is
at a low ebb), we find that to every 2-1/4 of the population, there is
one child acquiring the rudiments of knowledge; while in England there
is only one such pupil to every _fourteen_ inhabitants.
It has been calculated that there are, at the present day in England and
Wales, nearly 8,000,000 persons who can neither read nor write--that is
to say, nearly one quarter of the population. Also, that of all the
children between five and fourteen, more than one half attend no place
of instruction. These statements--compiled by Mr. Kay, from official and
other authentic sources, for his work on the Social Condition and
Education of the Poor in England and Europe, would be hard to believe,
if we had not to encounter in our every-day life degrees of illiteracy
which would be startling, if we were not thoroughly used to it. Wherever
we turn, ignorance, not always allied to poverty, stares us in the face.
If we look in the Gazette, at the list of partnerships dissolved, not a
month passes but some unhappy man, rolling perhaps in wealth, but
wallowing in ignorance, is put to the _experimentum crucis_ of "his
mark." The number of petty jurors--in rural districts especially--who
can only sign with a cross is enormous. It is not unusual to see parish
documents of great local importance defaced with the same humiliating
symbol by persons whose office shows them to be not only "men of mark,"
but men of substance. We have printed already specimens of the partial
ignorance which passes under the ken of the Post Office authorities, and
we may venture to assert, that such specimens of penmanship and
orthography are not to be matched in any other country in Europe. A
housewife in humble life need only turn to the file of her tradesmen's
bills to discover hieroglyphics which render them so many arithmetical
puzzles. In short, the practical evidences of the low ebb to which the
plainest rudiments of education in this country has fallen, are too
common to bear repetition. We can not pass through the streets, we can
not enter a place of public assembly, or ramble in the fields, without
the gloomy shadow of Ignorance sweeping over us. The rural population is
indeed in a worse plight than the other classes. We quote--with the
attestation of our own experience--the following passage from one of a
series of articles which have recently appeared in a morning newspaper:
"Taking the adult class of agricultural laborers, it is almost
impossible to exaggerate the ignorance in which they live and move and
have their being. As they work in the fields, the external world has
some hold upon them through the medium of their senses; but to all the
higher exercises of intellect, they are perfect strangers. You can not
address one of them without being at once painfully struck with the
intellectual darkness which enshrouds him. There is in general neither
speculation in his eyes, nor intelligence in his countenance. The whole
expression is more that of an animal than of a man. He is wanting, too,
in the erect and independent bearing of a man. When you, accost him, if
he is not insolent--which he seldom is--he is timid and shrinking, his
whole manner showing that he feels himself at a distance from you,
greater than should separate any two classes of men. He is often
doubtful when you address, and suspicious when you question him; he is
seemingly oppressed with the interview, while it lasts, and obviously
relieved when it is over. These are the traits which I can affirm them
to possess as a class, after having come in contact with many hundreds
of farm laborers. They belong to a generation for whose intellectual
culture little or nothing was done. As a class, they have no amusements
beyond the indulgence of sense. In nine cases out of ten, recreation is
associated in their minds with nothing higher than sensuality. I have
frequently asked clergymen and others, if they often find the adult
peasant reading for his own or others' amusement? The invariable answer
is, that such a sight is seldom or never witnessed. In the first place,
_the great bulk of them can not read_. In the next, a large proportion
of those who can do so with too much difficulty to admit of the exercise
being an amusement to them. Again, few of those who can read with
comparative ease, have the taste for doing so. It is but justice to them
to say, that many of those who can not read, have bitterly regretted, in
my hearing, their inability to do so. I shall never forget the tone in
which an old woman in Cornwall intimated to me what a comfort it would
now be to her, could she only read her Bible in her lonely hours."
We now turn to the high lights of the picture as presented abroad, and
which, from their very brightness, throw our own intellectual gloom into
deeper shade. Mr. Kay observes in the work we have already cited:
"It is a great fact, however much, we may be inclined to doubt it, that
throughout Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, Bohemia, Wirtemberg, Baden, Hesse
Darmstadt, Hesse Cassel, Gotha, Nassau, Hanover, Denmark, Switzerland,
Norway, and the Austrian Empire, ALL the children are actually at this
present time attending school, and are receiving a careful, religious,
moral, and intellectual education, from highly educated and efficient
teachers. Over the vast tract of country which I have mentioned, as well
as in Holland, and the greater part of France, _all_ the children above
six years of age are daily acquiring useful knowledge and good habits
under the _influence_ of moral, religious, and learned teachers. ALL the
youth of the greater part of these countries, below the age of
twenty-one years, can read, write, and cipher, and know the Bible
History, and the history of their own country. No children are left idle
and dirty in the streets of the towns--there is no class of children to
be compared in any respect to the children who frequent our "ragged
schools"--all the children, even of the poorest parents, are, in a great
part of these countries, in dress, appearance, cleanliness, and manners,
as polished and civilized as the children of our middle classes; the
children of the poor in Germany are so civilized that the rich often
send their children to the schools intended for the poor; and, lastly,
in a great part of Germany and Switzerland, the children of the poor are
receiving a _better_ education than that given in England to the
children of the greater part of our middle classes."
"I remember one day," says Mr. Kay in another page, "when walking near
Berlin in the company of Herr Hintz, a professor in Dr. Diesterweg's
Normal College, and of another teacher, we saw a poor woman cutting up,
in the road, logs of wood for winter use. My companions pointed her out
to me, and said, 'Perhaps you will scarcely believe it, but in the
neighborhood of Berlin, poor women, like that one, read translations of
Sir Walter Scott's Novels, and many of the interesting works of your
language, besides those of the principal writers of Germany.' This
account was afterward confirmed by the testimony of several other
persons. Often and often have I seen the poor cab-drivers of Berlin,
while waiting for a fare, amusing themselves by reading German books,
which they had brought with them in the morning, expressly for the
purpose of supplying amusement and occupation for their leisure hours.
In many parts of these countries, the peasants and the workmen of the
towns attend regular weekly lectures or weekly classes, where they
practice singing or chanting, or learn mechanical drawing, history, or
science. The intelligence of the poorer classes of these countries is
shown by their manners. The whole appearance of a German peasant who has
been brought up under this system, _i. e._, of any of the poor who have
not attained the age of thirty-five years, is very different to that of
our own peasantry. The German, Swiss, or Dutch peasant, who has grown up
to manhood under the new system, and since the old feudal system was
overthrown, is not nearly so often, as with us, distinguished by an
uncouth dialect. On the contrary, they speak as their teachers speak,
clearly, without hesitation, and grammatically. They answer questions
politely, readily, and with the ease which shows they have been
accustomed to mingle with men of greater wealth and of better education
than themselves. They do not appear embarrased, still less do they
appear gawkish or stupid, when addressed. If, in asking a peasant a
question, a stranger, according to the polite custom of the country,
raises his hat, the first words of reply are the quietly uttered ones,
'I pray you, sir, be covered.' A Prussian peasant is always polite and
respectful to a stranger, but quite as much at his ease as when speaking
to one of his own fellows."
Surely the contrast presented between the efforts of the schoolmaster
abroad and his inactivity at home--refuting, as it does, our hourly
boastings of "intellectual progress"--should arouse us, energetically
and practically, to the work of educational extension.
LINES BY ROBERT SOUTHEY.
(FROM AN UNPUBLISHED AUTOGRAPH.)
The days of Infancy are all a dream,
How fair, but oh! how short they seem--
'Tis Life's sweet opening SPRING!
The days of Youth advance:
The bounding limb, the ardent glance.
The kindling soul they bring--
It is Life's burning SUMMER time.
Manhood--matured with wisdom's fruit,
Reward of learning's deep pursuit--
Succeeds, as AUTUMN follows Summer's prime.
And that, and that, alas! goes by;
And what ensues? The languid eye,
The failing frame, the soul o'ercast;
'Tis WINTER'S sickening, withering blast,
Life's blessed season--for it is the last.
[From the Autobiography of Leigh Hunt.]
THE SCHOOLMASTER OF COLERIDGE AND LAMB.
BY LEIGH HUNT.
Boyer, the upper master of Christ-Hospital--famous for the mention of
him by COLERIDGE and LAMB--was a short, stout man, inclining to
punchiness, with large face and hands, an aquiline nose, long upper lip,
and a sharp mouth. His eye was close and cruel. The spectacles which he
wore threw a balm over it. Being a clergyman, he dressed in black, with
a powdered wig. His clothes were cut short; his hands hung out of the
sleeves, with tight wristbands, as if ready for execution; and as he
generally wore gray worsted stockings, very tight, with a little
balustrade leg, his whole appearance presented something formidably
succinct, hard, and mechanical. In fact, his weak side, and undoubtedly
his natural destination, lay in carpentry; and he accordingly carried,
in a side-pocket made on purpose, a carpenter's rule.
The merits of BOYER consisted in his being a good verbal scholar, and
conscientiously acting up to the letter of time and attention. I have
seen him nod at the close of the long summer school-hours, wearied out;
and I should have pitied him, if he had taught us any thing but to fear.
Though a clergyman, very orthodox, and of rigid morals, he indulged
himself in an oath, which was "God's-my-life!" When you were out in your
lesson, he turned upon you a round, staring eye like a fish; and he had
a trick of pinching you under the chin, and by the lobes of the ears,
till he would make the blood come. He has many times lifted a boy off
the ground in this way. He was, indeed, a proper tyrant, passionate and
capricious; would take violent likes and dislikes to the same boys;
fondle some without any apparent reason, though he had a leaning to the
servile, and, perhaps, to the sons of rich people; and he would
persecute others in a manner truly frightful. I have seen him beat a
sickly-looking, melancholy boy (C----n) about the head and ears, till
the poor fellow, hot, dry-eyed, and confused, seemed lost in
bewilderment. C----n, not long after he took orders, died out of his
senses. I do not attribute that catastrophe to the master; and of course
he could not wish to do him any lasting mischief. He had no imagination
of any sort. But there is no saying how far his treatment of the boy
might have contributed to prevent a cure. Tyrannical schoolmasters
nowadays are to be found, perhaps, exclusively in such inferior schools
as those described with such masterly and indignant edification by my
friend Charles Dickens; but they formerly seemed to have abounded in
all; and masters, as well as boys, have escaped the chance of many
bitter reflections, since a wiser and more generous intercourse has come
up between them.
I have some stories of Boyer, that will completely show his character,
and at the same time relieve the reader's indignation by something
ludicrous in their excess. We had a few boarders at the school; boys,
whose parents were too rich to let them go on the foundation. Among
them, in my time, was Carlton, a son of Lord Dorchester; Macdonald, one
of the Lord Chief Baron's sons; and R----, the son of a rich merchant.
Carlton, who was a fine fellow, manly, and fall of good sense, took his
new master and his caresses very coolly, and did not want them. Little
Macdonald also could dispense with them, and would put on his delicate
gloves after lesson, with an air as if he resumed his patrician plumage.
R---- was meeker, and willing to be encouraged; and there would the
master sit, with his arm round his tall waist, helping him to his Greek
verbs, as a nurse does bread and milk to an infant; and repeating them,
when he missed, with a fond patience, that astonished us criminals in
drugget.
Very different was the treatment of a boy on the foundation, whose
friends, by some means or other, had prevailed on the master to pay him
an extra attention, and try to get him on. He had come into the school
at an age later than usual, and could hardly read. There was a book used
by the learners in reading, called "Dialogues between a Missionary and
an Indian." It was a poor performance, full of inconclusive arguments
and other commonplaces. The boy in question used to appear with this
book in his hand in the middle of the school, the master standing behind
him. The lesson was to begin. Poor ----, whose great fault lay in a
deep-toned drawl of his syllables and the omission of his stops, stood
half-looking at the book, and half-casting his eye toward the right of
him, whence the blows were to proceed. The master looked over him; and
his hand was ready. I am not exact in my quotation at this distance of
time; but the _spirit_ of one of the passages that I recollect was to
the following purport, and thus did the teacher and his pupil proceed:
_Master._ "Now, young man, have a care; or I'll set you a _swinging_
task." (A common phrase of his.)
_Pupil._ (Making a sort of heavy bolt at his calamity, and never
remembering his stop at the word Missionary.) "_Missionary_ Can you see
the wind?"
(Master gives him a slap on the cheek.)
_Pupil._ (Raising his voice to a cry, and still forgetting his stop.)
"_Indian_ No!"
_Master._ "God's-my-life, young man! have a care how you provoke me."
_Pupil._ (Always forgetting the stop.) "_Missionary_ How then do you
know that there is such a thing?"
(Here a terrible thump.)
_Pupil._ (With a shout of agony.) "_Indian_ Because I feel it."
One anecdote of his injustice will suffice for all. It is of ludicrous
enormity; nor do I believe any thing more flagrantly willful was ever
done by himself. I heard Mr. C----, the sufferer, now a most respectable
person in a government office, relate it with a due relish, long after
quitting the school. The master was in the habit of "spiting" C----;
that is to say, of taking every opportunity to be severe with him,
nobody knew why. One day he comes into the school, and finds him placed
in the middle of it with three other boys. He was not in one of his
worst humors, and did not teem inclined to punish them, till he saw his
antagonist. "Oh, oh, sir!" said he; "what! you are among them, are you?"
and gave him an exclusive thump on the face. He then turned to one of
the Grecians, and said, "I have not time to flog all these boys; make
them draw lots, and I'll punish one." The lots were drawn, and C----'s
was favorable. "Oh, oh!" returned the master, when he saw them, "you
have escaped, have you, sir?" and pulling out his watch, and turning
again to the Grecian, observed, that he found he _had_ time to punish
the whole three; "and, sir," added he to C----, with another slap, "I'll
begin with _you_." He then took the boy into the library and flogged
him; and, on issuing forth again, had the face to say, with an air of
indifference, "I have not time, after all, to punish these two other
boys; let them take care how they provoke me another time."
Often did I wish that I was a fairy, in order to play him tricks like a
Caliban. We used to sit and fancy what we should do with his wig; how we
would hamper and vex him; "put knives in his pillow, and halters in his
pew." To venture on a joke in our own mortal persons, was like playing
with Polyphemus. One afternoon, when he was nodding with sleep over a
lesson, a boy of the name of Meaer, who stood behind him, ventured to
take a pin, and begin advancing with it up his wig. The hollow,
exhibited between the wig and the nape of the neck, invited him. The
boys encouraged this daring act of gallantry. Nods and becks, and then
whispers of "Go it, M.!" gave more and more valor to his hand. On a
sudden, the master's head falls back; he starts, with eyes like a shark;
and seizing the unfortunate culprit, who stood helpless in the act of
holding the pin, caught hold of him, fiery with passion. A "swinging
task" ensued, which kept him at home all the holidays. One of these
tasks would consist of an impossible quantity of Virgil, which the
learner, unable to retain it at once, wasted his heart and soul out "to
get up," till it was too late.
Sometimes, however, our despot got into a dilemma, and then he did not
know how to get out of it. A boy, now and then, would be roused into
open and fierce remonstrance. I recollect S., afterward one of the
mildest of preachers, starting up in his place, and pouring forth on his
astonished hearer a torrent of invectives and threats, which the other
could only answer by looking pale, and uttering a few threats in return.
Nothing came of it. He did not like such matters to go before the
governors. Another time, Favell, a Grecian, a youth of high spirit, whom
he had struck, went to the school-door, opened it, and, turning round
with the handle in his grasp, told him he would never set foot again in
the place, unless he promised to treat him with more delicacy. "Come
back, child--come back!" said the other, pale, and in a faint voice.
There was a dead silence. Favell came back, and nothing mere was done.
A sentiment, unaccompanied with something practical, would have been
lost upon him D----, who went afterward to the Military College at
Woolwich, played him a trick, apparently between jest and earnest, which
amused us exceedingly. He was to be flogged; and the dreadful door of
the library was approached. (They did not invest the books with flowers,
as Montaigne recommends.) Down falls the criminal, and, twisting himself
about the master's legs, which he does the more when the other attempts
to move, repeats without ceasing, "Oh, good God! consider my father,
sir; my father, sir; you know my father!" The point was felt to be
getting ludicrous, and was given up. P----, now a popular preacher, was
in the habit of entertaining the boys that way. He was a regular wag;
and would snatch his jokes out of the very flame and fury of the master,
like snap-dragon. Whenever the other struck him, P. would get up; and,
half to avoid the blows, and half render them ridiculous, begin moving
about the school-room, making all sorts of antics. When he was struck in
the face, he would clap his hand with affected vehemence to the place,
and cry as rapidly, "_Oh_, Lord!" If the blow came on the arm, he would
grasp his arm, with a similar exclamation. The master would then go,
driving and kicking him; while the patient accompanied every blow with
the same comments and illustrations, making faces to us by way of index.
What a bit of a golden age was it, when the Rev. Mr. Steevens, one of
the under grammar-masters, took his place, on some occasion, for a short
time! Steevens was short and fat, with a handsome, cordial face. You
loved him as you looked at him; and seemed as if you should love him the
more, the fatter he became. I stammered when I was at that time of life;
which was an infirmity that used to get me into terrible trouble with
the master. Steevens used to say, on the other hand, "Here comes our
little black-haired friend, who stammers so. Now, let us see what we can
do for him." The consequence was, I did not hesitate half so much as
with the other. When I did, it was out of impatience to please him.
Such of us were not liked the better by the master, as were in favor
with his wife. She was a sprightly, good-looking woman, with black eyes,
and was beheld with transport by the boys, whenever she appeared at the
school-door. Her husband's name, uttered in a mingled tone of
good-nature and imperativeness, brought him down from his seat with
smiling haste. Sometimes he did not return. On entering the school one
day, he found a boy eating cherries. "Where did you get those cherries?"
exclaimed he, thinking the boy had nothing to say for himself. "Mrs.
Boyer gave them me, sir." He turned away, scowling with disappointment.
Speaking of fruit, reminds me of a pleasant trait on the part of a
Grecian of the name of Le Grice. He was the maddest of all the great
boys in my time; clever, full of address, and not hampered with modesty.
Remote rumors, not lightly to be heard, fell on our ears, respecting
pranks of his among the nurses' daughters. He had a fair, handsome face,
with delicate, aquiline nose, and twinkling eyes. I remember his
astonishing me, when I was "a new boy," with sending me for a bottle of
water, which he proceeded to pour down the back of G., a grave Deputy
Grecian. On the master asking him one day, why he, of all the boys, had
given up no exercise (it was a particular exercise that they were bound
to do in the course of a long set of holidays), he said he had had "a
lethargy." The extreme impudence of this puzzled the master; and I
believe nothing came of it. But what I alluded to about the fruit was
this: Le Grice was in the habit of eating apples in school-time, for
which he had been often rebuked. One day, having particularly pleased
the master, the latter, who was eating apples himself, and who would now
and then with great ostentation present a boy with some half-penny token
of his mansuetude, called out to his favorite of the moment: "Le Grice,
here is an apple for you." Le Grice, who felt his dignity hurt as a
Grecian, but was more pleased at having this opportunity of mortifying
his reprover, replied, with an exquisite tranquillity of assurance,
"Sir, I never eat apples." For this, among other things, the boy's
adored him. Poor fellow! He and Favell (who, though very generous, was
said to be a little too sensible of an humble origin) wrote to the Duke
of York, when they were at college, for commissions in the army. The
duke good-naturedly sent them. Le Grice died in the West Indies. Favell
was Killed in one of the battles in Spain, but not before he had
distinguished himself as an officer and a gentleman.
EDUCATION IN AMERICA
What is the enterprise and general prosperity of the Americans to be
attributed to (their country is not naturally so rich or fruitful as
Mexico), except to their general enlightenment? The oldest manufacturers
of cotton in the world are the Hindoos; labor with them is cheaper than
it is in any other part of the world: yet we take the cotton that grows
at the doors of their factories, bring it 13,000 miles to this country,
manufacture it here where labor is so expensive, take it back 13,000
miles, and undersell the native manufacturer. Labor is dearer in America
than in any part of the world, and yet we dread and fear their
competition more than that of any other nation. The reason of all this
is obvious. All the advantages which the Hindoo possesses are far more
than counterbalanced by his intellectual inferiority to ourselves; while
we dread the American, with reason, because he is, intellectually at
least, our equal, and, considering the general intelligence and good
conduct of the hands he employs, our superior. To what cause, except
that of a decided superiority in captains and crews, can we attribute
the fact that the Americans have deprived us of so large a portion of
the whale fishery, as in a measure to have monopolized it? American
clocks, which we now see in almost every hall and cottage, ought to set
us thinking. We may be sure of this, the commerce of the world will fall
into the hands of those who are most deserving of it. If political or
philanthropic considerations should fail to show us the necessity of
educating our people, commercial considerations will one day remind us
of what we ought to have done. We can only hope that the reminder may
not come too late.
Enlightenment is the great necessity and the great glory of our age;
ignorance is the most expensive, and most dangerous, and most pressing
of all our evils. Among ourselves we find a variety of motives
converging upon this conclusion. The statesman has become aware that an
enlightened population is more orderly, more submissive, in times of
public distress, to the necessity of their circumstances; not so easily
led away by agitators; in short, more easily and more cheaply governed.
The political economist is well aware of the close connection between
general intelligence and successful enterprise and industry. The greater
the number of enlightened and intelligent persons, the greater is the
number of those whose thoughts are at work in subduing nature, improving
arts, and increasing national wealth. The benevolent man is anxious that
all should share those enjoyments and advantages which he himself finds
to be the greatest. Both Churchman and Dissenter know well enough that
they are under the necessity of educating. And the manufacturer, too,
who is employing, perhaps, many more hands than the colonel of a
regiment commands, is now becoming well aware how much to his advantage
it is that his men should prefer a book or a reading-room to the parlor
of a public house; should understand what they are about, instead of
being merely able to go through their allotted task as so many beasts of
burden; and that they should have the strong motive of making their
homes decent and respectable, and of bettering their condition. All
these motives are now working--strongly, too--in the public mind, and
have begun to bear fruit.--_Frazer's Magazine._
[From Bartlett's "Nile Boat."]
SCENES IN EGYPT.
The Egyptian Pyramids.--How many illustrious travelers in all ages have
sat and gazed upon the scene around! and how endless are the
speculations in which they have indulged! "The epochs, the builders, and
the objects of the pyramids," says Gliddon, "had, for two thousand
years, been dreams, fallacies, or mysteries." To begin at the beginning,
some have supposed them to be antediluvian; others, that they were built
by the children of Noah to escape from a second flood--by Nimrod, by the
Pali of Hindostan, and even the ancient Irish. It was a favorite theory
until very lately, that they were the work of the captive Israelites.
The Arabians attributed them to the Jins or Genii; others to a race of
Titans. Some have supposed them to have been the granaries built by
Joseph; others, intended for his tomb, or those of the Pharaoh drowned
in the Red Sea, or of the bull Apis. Yeates thinks they soon followed
the Tower of Babel, and both had the same common design; while,
according to others, they were built with the spoils of Solomon's temple
and the riches of the queen of Sheba. They have been regarded as temples
of Venus, as reservoirs for purifying the waters of the Nile, as erected
for astronomical or mathematical purposes, or intended to protect the
valley of the Nile from the encroachments of the sands of the desert
(this notable theory, too, is quite recent); in short, for every
conceivable and inconceivable purpose that could be imagined by
superstitious awe, by erudition groping without data in the dark, or
reasoning upon the scanty and suspicious evidence of Grecian writers. At
length, after a silence of thousands of years, the discoveries of
Champollion have enabled the monuments to tell their own tale; their
mystery has been, in great measure, unraveled, and the names of their
founders ascertained. The explorations of Colonel Vyse, Perring, and
recently of Lepsius, have brought to light the remains of no less than
_sixty-nine_ pyramids, extending in a line from Abouroash to Dashoor.
These, by the discovery of the names of their founders, are proved to
have been a succession of royal mausolea, forming the most sublime
Necropolis in the world. The size of each different pyramid is supposed
to bear relation to the length of the reign of its builder, being
commenced with the delving of a tomb in the rock for him at his
accession, over which a fresh layer of stones was added every year until
his decease, when the monument was finished and closed up. Taking the
number of these Memiphite sovereigns and the average length of their
reigns, the gradual construction of the pyramids would, therefore, it is
presumed, extend over a period, in round numbers, of some _sixteen
hundred years!_ Imagination is left to conceive the antecedent period
required for the slow formation of the alluvial valley of the Nile until
it became fit for human habitation, whether it was first peopled by an
indigenous race, or by an Asiatic immigration, already bringing with
them from their Asiatic birth-place the elements of civilization, or
whether they grew up on the spot, and the long, long ages that might
have elapsed, and the progress that must have been made, before
monuments so wonderful could have been erected.
[Illustration: THE PYRAMIDS.]
Such is the latest theory, we believe, of the construction and import of
the pyramids.
The entrance to the great pyramid is about forty feet from the ground.
At the entrance, the stones follow the inclination of the passage:
there are a few foot-holes to aid you in descending the slippery blocks.
Stooping down at the entrance of the low passage, four feet high, we
began the sloping descent into the interior. This first passage
continues on a slope, down to a subterranean room; but at the distance
of 106 feet, a block of granite closes it; and an upper passage ascends
from this point at an angle of 27°. Climbing by a few steps into the
second passage, you ascend to the entrance of the great gallery. From
this point a horizontal passage leads into what is called the Queen's
Chamber, which is small, and roofed by long blocks, resting against each
other, and forming an angle: its height to this point is about twenty
feet. There is a niche in the east end, where the Arabs have broken the
stones in search for treasure; and Sir G. Wilkinson thinks, that "if the
pit where the king's body was deposited does exist in any of these
rooms, it should be looked for beneath this niche." He remarks besides,
that this chamber stands under the apex of the pyramid. At the base of
the great gallery, to which we now return, is the mouth of what is
called the well, a narrow funnel-shaped passage, leading down to the
chamber at the base of the edifice, hollowed in the rock, and if the
theory of Dr. Lepsius is correct, originally containing the body of the
founder. The long ascending slope of the great gallery, six feet wide,
is formed by successive courses of masonry overlaying each other, and
thus narrowing the passage toward the top.
[Illustration]
Advancing 158 feet up this impressive avenue, we come to a horizontal
passage, where four granite portcullises, descending through grooves,
once opposed additional obstacles to the rash curiosity or avarice which
might tempt any to invade the eternal silence of the sepulchral chamber,
which they besides concealed, but the cunning of the spoiler has been
there of old, the device was vain, and you are now enabled to enter
this, the principal apartment in the pyramid, and called the King's
Chamber, entirely constructed of red granite, as is also the
sarcophagus, the lid and contents of which had been removed. This is
entirely plain, and without hieroglyphics; the more singular, as it
seems to be ascertained that they were then in use. The sarcophagus
rests upon an enormous granite block, which may, as suggested by Mrs.
Poole, in her minute account of the interior, have been placed to mark
the entrance to a deep vault or pit beneath. There are some small holes
in the walls of the chamber, the purpose of which was for ventilation,
as at length discovered by Col. Howard Vyse.
Above the King's Chamber, and only to be reached by a narrow passage,
ascending at the south-east corner of the great gallery, having notches
in which pieces of wood were formerly inserted, and from the top of
that, along another passage, is the small chamber discovered by Mr.
Davison; its height is only three feet six inches; above it are four
other similar niches, discovered by Colonel Howard Vyse, the topmost of
which is angular. Wilkinson supposes that the sole purpose of these
chambers is to relieve the pressure on the King's Chamber, and here was
discovered the cartouche containing the name of the founder, Suphis,
identical with that found upon the tablets in Wady Maghara, in the
desert of Mount Sinai.
The second pyramid, generally attributed, though without hieroglyphical
confirmation, to Cephrenes, is more ancient and ruder in its masonry
than that of Cheops. Standing on higher ground, it has from some points
an appearance of greater height than that of the great pyramid, and its
dimensions are hardly less stupendous. It is distinguished by having a
portion of the smooth casing yet remaining, with which all the pyramids
were once covered, and it is a great feat to climb up this dangerous,
slippery surface to the summit. Yet there are plenty of Arabs who for a
trifling beckshish will dash "down Cheops and up Cephrenes" with
incredible celerity. Its interior arrangements differ from those of the
great pyramid, in that in accordance with Lepsius's theory, the
sarcophagus of the builder is sunk in the floor, and not placed in the
centre of the edifice. The glory of opening this pyramid is due to the
enterprising Belzoni.
The third pyramid is of much smaller dimensions than the two others, but
beautifully constructed. It was the work, as is proved by the discovery
of his name, of Mycerinus or Mencheres, whose wooden coffin in the
British Museum, very simple, and unornamented, as well as the desiccated
body, supposed to be that of the monarch himself, has probably attracted
the notice of our readers. This pyramid is double, _i. e._, eased over
with a distinct covering. Besides these principal ones, there are still
standing other and smaller pyramids, more or less entire, grouped about
these larger ones, and forming a portion of this stupendous Necropolis
of Memphis.
* * * * *
THE GREAT HALL AT KARNAK.--We had spent so much time in the examination
of Luxor, and of the other portions of Karnak, that the evening was
advanced when we arrived at the Great Hall. The shadows were creeping
solemnly through the intricate recesses of its forest of columns, but
the red light rested for a while upon their beautiful flower-shaped
capitals, the paintings upon which, scarred and worn as they are by the
accidents of 3000 years, still display, under a strong light, much of
their original vividness. It is a perfect wilderness of ruin, almost
outrunning the wildest imagination or the most fantastic dream. We paced
slowly down the central avenue. The bases of the columns are buried
among the fallen fragments of the roof and a mass of superincumbent
earth; from his hiding-place, amidst which the jackal began to steal
forth, and wake the echoes of the ruins with his blood-curdling shriek;
while the shadowy bat flitted, spirit-like, from dusky pillar to pillar.
From the centre of the hall, whichever way we looked through the
deepening gloom, there seemed no end to the labyrinthine ruins. Obelisks
and columns, some erect in their pristine beauty, others fallen across,
and hurled together in hideous confusion, forming wild arcades of ruin;
enormous masses of prostrate walls and propylæa, seemed to have required
either to construct or to destroy them the power of a fabled race of
giants. Pillars, obelisks, and walls of this immense hall, were covered
with the forms of monarchs who reigned, and of the gods who were once
worshiped within it. Involuntarily the mind goes back, in gazing on
them, to the period of its original splendor, when Rameses in triumph
returned from his oriental conquests--pictures the pile in all its
completeness, the hall of a hundred and thirty columns with its superb
roof, glittering in all the vivid beauty of its paintings, thronged with
monarchs, and priests, and worshipers, and devoted to splendid and
gorgeous ceremonies.
[Illustration: GREAT HALL AT KARNAK.]
Next morning, after an early breakfast, I was again among the ruins of
the Great Hall, which I had but imperfectly surveyed the previous
evening. I give its dimensions from Wilkinson, with a description of the
rest of the temple. "It measures 170 feet by 329, supported by a
central avenue of twelve massive columns, 66 feet high (without the
pedestal and abacus) and 12 in diameter, besides a hundred and
twenty-two of smaller, or rather less gigantic dimensions, 41 feet 9
inches in height, and 27 feet 6 inches in circumference, distributed in
seven lines on either side of the former. The twelve central columns
were originally fourteen, but the two northernmost have been inclosed
within the front towers or popylæa, apparently in the time of Osirei
himself, the founder of the hall. The two at the other end were also
partly built into the projecting wall of the doorway, as appears from
their rough sides, which were left uneven for that purpose. Attached to
this are two other towers, closing the inner extremity of the hall,
beyond which are two obelisks, one still standing on its original site,
the other having been thrown down and broken by human violence. Similar
but smaller propylæa succeed to this court, of which they form the inner
side." This is the spot which I have selected for a retrospective view
of the Great Hall, the obelisk still standing, but the propylæa in the
fore-ground a mass of utter ruin. Still following the intricate plan of
the great temple through the ruined propylæa in the fore-ground, we
reach another court with two obelisks of larger dimensions, the one now
standing being 92 feet high and 8 square, surrounded by a peristyle, if
I may be allowed the expression, of Osiride figures. Passing between two
dilapidated propylæa, you enter another smaller area, ornamented in a
similar manner, and succeeded by a vestibule, in front of the granite
gateways that form the façade of the court before the sanctuary. This
last is also of red granite, divided into two apartments, and surrounded
by numerous chambers of small dimensions, varying from 29 feet by 16, to
16 feet by 8. The walls of this small sanctuary, standing on the site of
a more ancient one, are highly polished, sculptured, and painted, and
the ceiling of stars on a blue ground, the whole exquisitely finished.
The entire height of the hall, _i. e._, the central portion, is not less
than 80 feet, the propylæa still higher.
The imagination is no doubt bewildered in following these numerous
details, and yet much is left undescribed and even unnoticed, and the
eye, even of the visitor, more than satisfied with seeing, will return
to the prominent objects, those alone, of which he can expect to retain
a vivid recollection. The Great Hall will attract his attention above
every thing else.
SCENERY ON THE ERIE RAILROAD.
[Illustration: VIEW FROM PIERMONT, LOOKING NORTH.]
The construction of the Erie railroad through the hitherto secluded
valleys of the Delaware and Susquehanna rivers, and reaching now almost
to the Allegany, has opened to access new fields for the tourist,
abounding with the loveliest and the grandest works of Nature. From the
Hudson to the Lakes, the scenery is constantly changing from the
romantic and beautiful to the bold and rugged; and again from the
sublime and fearfully grand to the sweetest pictures of gentle beauty.
There is probably no road in the world that passes through such a
variety of scenery as does the Erie, and there is certainly none that
can present to the traveler such a succession of triumphs of art over
the formidable obstacles which nature has, at almost every step, raised
against the iron-clad intruders into her loveliest recesses. The
enchanting magnificence of the scenery keeps the attention alive, while
its varying character at every turn, continually opens new sources of
enjoyment. Immense rocky excavations salute you upon every side. Miles
of mountain acclivities of solid rock have been borne away by the
Herculean arm of persevering industry. You see where the lofty cliff has
been beaten down; the huge mountain-barrier leveled; rough and rugged
precipices overcome; chasms spanned, and wide valleys and rivers
crossed.
The scenery in the valley of the Delaware is grand beyond description;
and in the valley of the Susquehanna, after passing out of a wilderness,
where every portion is stamped with the impress of grandeur, a truly
agricultural region, in a high state of cultivation, and smiling with
abundance, meets the eye. At the point where the road first strikes the
Susquehanna, that noble river is seen in the plenitude of its
magnificent beauty.
[Illustration: VALLEY OF THE NEVERSINK.
From the Slate Rock Cutting. Port Jervis in the distance.]
It is not our purpose to point out the particular objects most worthy
of examination, or to describe any one of the numerous landscapes which
lie all along the track; but we will venture to assert, that nowhere
between sun and sun can such a combination and variety of the wonderful
in nature and art, with the beautiful be seen, as in a day's ride on the
Erie railroad. Sketches of some of these views accompany this article,
and we may, from time to time, give such others as we think will prove
interesting to our readers.
The reader is familiar with the geography of the road: commencing at
Piermont, on the Hudson, twenty-four miles from New York, on the long
pier that projects a mile into the river, it winds its way westward
among the hills along the course of the Sparkill. Just before leaving
the pier, looking north, the view on the preceding page is presented.
From the Sparkill the road leads over to the Ramapo, where the first
lovely scenery commences, in a wild and broken, but picturesque region;
thence through Orange county, beautiful mostly from its fertility and
high cultivation. Passing on, the road approaches the Shawangunk
mountains, which are seen stretching away to the northeast, where the
eye catches a misty glimpse of the distant Catskills. The appearance of
these mountains from the east is truly sublime; and ascending toward the
summit the country is as rugged as the wildest steeps of the Appenines
or Styrian Alps. After passing the summit of the mountain through a
rock-cutting, half a mile in length, the road winds by a gentle slope of
a dozen miles along the mountain side to the valley below. About half
way down, another deep cutting through the rock is passed, on emerging
from which, a view of remarkable loveliness meets the eye. At this point
the traveler has an unbroken view of the enchanting valley of the
Neversink in all its cultivated beauty. The accompanying view represents
the scene from the spot where the road boldly sweeps toward the south,
and shows the western verge of the valley bordered by a chain of
mountains, at the foot of which gleams the village of Port Jervis and
its level fields, losing themselves far in the south where rolls the
Delaware, beyond which again the distant town of Milford may be seen in
the misty light. Running south through this beautiful area is a winding
grove of trees, marking the course of the Neversink to where it unites
with the Delaware.
[Illustration: STARRUCCA VIADUCT.]
We will present only one other view, which represents one of the
imposing structures which characterize the Erie road. This is the
viaduct over the valley of the Starrucca, built of stone. It is elevated
one hundred feet above the valley, is over twelve hundred feet long, and
twenty-five wide, and is composed of eighteen heavy piers, with arches
of fifty feet span. It is simple in its design, but symmetrical and
beautiful, and is altogether the noblest piece of work upon the whole
line of the road. It is one of the most interesting objects which invite
the notice of the traveler, and gives dignity and grandeur, as well as a
picturesque character to the work. In this immediate neighborhood is
some of the finest scenery to be found on the whole line of the road,
and will tempt many a traveler to repeat his visit, and linger to
explore new beauties, which the eye in the rolling car does not detect.
[From Dr. Moore's new work on "Health, Disease, and Remedy."]
BATHING--ITS UTILITY.
The effects of cold and heat recall to my mind the words that I heard in
my youth from the lips of Abernethy, "Cold is bracing, heat
relaxing--that is the notion, but only consider its absurdity. Heat
excites, how then can it relax? There is a difference between heat and
moisture and mere heat. They say a cold bath is bracing. Ah! a man jumps
into a cold bath, and he feels chilled; he jumps out again, and rubs
himself with a coarse cloth; he is invigorated, refreshed, and cheery;
he feels as if he could jump over the moon. So, if a man takes a glass
of brandy, he feels vigorous enough for a little while, but the brandy
is any thing but bracing. Keep the man in the cold water, and see what a
poor, shivering mortal he would be; you might almost knock him down with
a feather; and add more brandy to the man, and he becomes a lump." Heat
and cold, in fact, both operate in the same manner, by exciting the
vital powers into action, but to use either to excess as surely
debilitates, disorders, and overpowers the system as an abuse of brandy
would do. All things that cause action of course must act as stimuli,
and whatever rouses the heart and nerves must be proportioned to the
degree of power existing in the patient, or it can not be safe; it is
spurring the jaded horse that kills him. Moderation is the course
prescribed in the law of nature and of God, and it needs no exquisite
discernment to distinguish right from wrong in a general way, or to see
when the system needs rest, and when rousing.
_Sea-bathing_ is serviceable only as a stimulus to all the functions by
rousing the nerves, and hence the heart and arteries, to greater
activity. In this manner, I have seen vast benefit in a multitude of
cases, more particularly those in which the lymphatic system and the
glands were diseased, as in scrofula, tumid abdomen, and harsh skin,
with deficient appetite, and indisposition to take exercise. It does
mischief if it does not at once improve power. In such cases, however,
great care is required to avoid too long a chill, which always
aggravates the glandular congestion. Salt stimulates the skin, but a
certain degree of cold, and, perhaps, of shock, is necessary for the
beneficial effects, a warm bath very often increasing the malady. I
speak from my experience of the effects of sea-bathing, and would
strongly urge the propriety of preparing children for plunging in the
sea, by getting them accustomed to cold sponging at home, as this plan
will often supersede the need of visiting the sea for their benefit, and
enable them to bear the sea the better when advisable.
Sea-air and sea-water exert a very decided influence upon children, and,
indeed, upon all who are not accustomed to it, whether in health or
disease. Young persons coming from inland situations are very apt to
become somewhat fevered by the change, and bilious disorder is a common
consequence of their approaching the sea; and in almost all persons
sea-bathing begets after a while a slight intermittent disorder, which
seldom goes quite off in less than a fortnight from the last bath. If
the bath be resorted to daily, this disorder usually comes on in about a
week; if only twice or thrice a week, it may not appear for a month, and
those who bathe only now and then, without regularity, do not seem to be
subject to it. I am disposed to think that this new action of the system
promotes the cure of glandular disease, but it may, if neglected,
conduce to internal disorder of a worse kind, and I have frequently seen
a dangerous remittent fever supervene upon it in delicate and excitable
children. These results prove the stimulating operation of sea-water,
and sufficiently show the necessity of caution in its use. Instead of
improving the powers of the body, it may produce debility by
over-exciting them; hence it is prudent in most cases not to bathe
oftener than every other day, and to use milder measures if, after the
second or third occasion, there is not a visible increase of vigor.
Where exercise can not be taken immediately after the bath, friction of
the body, especially over the back and stomach, is desirable. The best
time for cold bathing, where there is any debility, is about two hours
after breakfast. Early bathing is best for the robust. Let it be
remembered that cold acts always as a stimulant; whenever it does good,
it rouses the nervous system; it makes a greater demand for oxygen; it
enables the body to absorb more of the vital air, and thus it
facilitates the changes on which the energy of life depends. In this
respect it acts like all other stimulants proper to the body, and not
like alcoholic stimuli, which excite the brain, while they diminish the
influence of the vital air upon the blood, and favor capillary
obstructions and inflammations.
The influence of cold on the nervous system is no new discovery, for
ever since man has felt and inferred from his feeling, he must have
known that influence alike from experience and observation. Used as a
bath, we have seen that it may produce very contrary effects; like any
other powerful agent, it both excites and depresses. The first action of
nearly all remedies is to excite; from fire to frost, from aqua fortis
to aqua fontis, the influence is always more or less stimulating, and it
is capable of depressing the vital powers in proportion to its power of
exciting them. Thus the hydropathists have in their hands the power of
producing all the stages of the most vehement fever, from the rigor of
the severest cold fit to the fiercest excitement which the heart and
brain will bear, succeeded by a perspiration proportionately violent;
and hence sometimes inadvertently they lose a patient by the production
of a sudden sinking like the collapse of cholera. Some tact and skill,
therefore, are requisite for the safe employment of such an agency as
cold water.
Paracelsus treated that form of St. Vitus' Dance which prevailed in his
day, and which he called _chorea lasciva_, by cooling his patients in
tubs of cold water; and Priesnitz brings his patients also to the right
point by baths that allow no idleness to whatever function of nature may
remain capable of action within them, and thus he often removes partial
complaints by a general diversion. Aubrey, in his account of the great
Harvey, informs us of a bold piece of practice with cold water. He says,
that when Harvey had a fit of the gout that interfered with his studies,
"He would sitt with his legges bare, though it were frosty, on the leads
of Cockayne-house, put them into a payle of water till he was almost
dead with cold, and betake himself to his stove, and so 'twas gone."
Harvey doubtless knew how to balance matters in his own mind between the
risk and the remedy, and he might feel justified in treating himself
with less gentleness than his patients; but, perhaps, physicians should
try such extreme remedies only on themselves. Since Harvey's day, the
virtues of cold water in fever and inflammation have been abundantly
tested, and we find it is capable of producing contrary effects,
according to the condition of the body at the time. Thus, if it be long
applied, or applied when the vital action is low, it dangerously
depresses the vascular system, to be followed by a more or less
dangerous and obstinate reaction; but if the system be tolerably strong,
without being very excitable, the use of cold in a moderate degree
always safely increases vigor. It is therefore always safe so far to
employ cold, as will help to maintain the ordinary temperature of the
body. Thus, in fever, when the skin is hot, sponging it with cold water
is both most refreshing and curative; while a free use of cold water as
drink is almost always in such cases highly advantageous.
It has been well shown by Dr. R. B. Todd, in his Lumleian Lectures at
the College of Physicians, on what principle cold may be employed to
modify and control a great number of diseases, especially those of a
convulsive character. But these things are of course known, or ought to
be known, by professional men; and as they are not of a character to
admit of practical application, except by those accustomed to treat
disease, it will answer no good purpose to enlarge on the subject in
this place.
The _warm-bath_ is among the most useful of remedial measures. One who
has experienced the delicious refreshment of a warm-bath at about the
temperature of the blood (100°), after exhausting fatigue and want of
sleep, whether from disease or exertion, will need no arguments in its
favor. It is exactly under such conditions that it is most useful. From
time immemorial, thermal springs of tepid warmth have been lauded for
their virtues in relieving nervous disorders, and diseases dependent on
insufficiency of blood, and exhaustion of the brain, such as the
dyspepsy of anxious persons, and individuals debilitated by excitement,
bad habits, and hot climates. The mode in which it acts seems
evident--it checks waste of warmth from the skin, invigorates its
vessels without producing perspiration, admits a little pure water into
the blood by absorption, and by its tranquillizing influence on the
nerves, favors the action of any function that may have been checked or
disturbed. The body becomes highly electric in warm water, and probably
all the conditions of increased power are present for the time at least;
and of course, so far as warm bathing promotes appetite, digestion,
assimilation, and sound sleep, it contributes to the establishment of
increased vigor. Thus we find, that hypochondriacal patients have often
found new hopes in the genial lymph as it embraced and laved their naked
limbs; they have felt the elements were still in their favor; they have
rejoiced in the sunny air, and taken their homely meals as if they were
ambrosia, with hearts grateful to the Hand that helped them. The
blessing may, however, be abused--the remedy may be made a luxury, the
means of health a cause of weakness. When continually resorted to by
persons well nourished, but inactive, it is apt to produce a flaccidity
of the system, and to encourage that relaxation of the veins which
predisposes to excessive formation of fat. For the same reason, it is
generally injurious where there is a tendency to dropsy, and in some
such cases I have known it immediately followed by great lymphatic
effusion in the cellular tissue, which has been quickly removed,
however, by saline aperients and tonics.
As it is the combination of heat and moisture that renders the thermal
bath so efficacious, it frequently happens that a thoroughly hot bath
most effectually facilitates the cure, and we are not astonished that
the parboiling waters of Emmaus, at 148°, on the shores of Tiberias, are
as famous for their cures as any of the German baths. The
semi-barbarians about the sea of Galilee, the inhabitants of Iceland,
and the savages of America, know how to employ the hot bath skillfully;
and if we were equally accustomed with them to exercise our natural
instinct and common sense, we also might bathe in hot water without
consulting the doctor; but as it is, we had better take advantage of a
better opinion than our own. I the more earnestly urge this course,
because I know the danger of all hot baths, wherever there is acute
disease of an inflammatory kind affecting internal organs, more
especially of the lungs, heart, and bowels. Even _acute_ rheumatism is
more likely to attack the heart when the hot bath is employed; and where
there is any considerable structural disorder of that organ, the use of
the bath in any form is at all times attended with risk.
Warm baths are useful in all nervous disorders attended with debility,
in all cases in which there is dryness of the skin and a tendency to
feverish less, in mental fidgetiness, in irregular circulation, as when
a person can not take due exercise, and is subject to coldness of the
feet or hands, and in many forms of congestion and dyspepsia, with
tenderness over the stomach. It is serviceable in the convulsive
diseases of children, and in painful diseases, especially of a spasmodic
kind, but more particularly in cases of chronic irritation from local
causes, whether of the skin or of internal parts. It is injurious to
plethoric persons, to persons subject to hæmorrhage of any kind, and in
the active stage of fever. But whether it would be good or bad in any
individual case, can be determined only by one who has ability to
examine and judge of that case.
As a general rule, mineral and salt-water warm baths are less relaxing
than those of pure water. The vapor bath, when the vapor is not
breathed, acts more powerfully, though much in the same manner as the
warm bath, but it is more useful in common cold and rheumatism. The
warm-air bath, at from 100° to 120°, is highly convenient and useful,
where it is desirable to excite perspiration, as in rheumatism, scaly
eruptions, and certain stages of fever and cholera. The plan most
readily adopted is that of Dr. Gower: A lamp is placed under the end of
a metallic tube, which is introduced under the bed-clothes, which are
raised from the body by a wicker frame-work, and the degree of heat
regulated by moving the lamp.
The _cold bath_ is unsafe in infancy and old age, in plethoric habits,
in spitting of blood, in eruptive diseases, in great debility, during
pregnancy, and in case of weakness from any existing local disease of an
acute nature; but in nearly all other states of the body, cold water is
the best stimulant of the nerves, the finest quickener of every
function, the most delightful invigorator of the whole frame, qualifying
both brain and muscles for their utmost activity, and clearing alike the
features and the fancy from clouds and gloom.
Cold may always be safely applied when the surface is heated by warmth
from without, as from hot water or the vapor bath, and, indeed, whenever
the body is hot without previous exercise of an exhausting kind.
Probably, the method adopted by the Romans, in their palmiest days, of
plunging into the _baptisterium_, or cold bath, immediately after the
vapor or hot bath, or, as a substitute, the pouring of cold water over
the head, was well calculated to invigorate the system, and give a high
enjoyment of existence. The Russian practice of plunging into a cold
stream, or rolling in the snow, after the vapor-bath, is said to be
favorable to longevity. The Finlanders are accustomed to leave their
bathing-houses, heated to 167°, and to pass into the open air without
any covering whatever, even when the thermometer indicates a temperature
24° below zero, and that without any ill effect, but, on the contrary,
it is said that by this habit they are quite exempted from rheumatism.
Would that the luxury of bathing, so cheaply enjoyed by all classes of
old Rome, were equally available among ourselves. The conquerors of the
world introduced their baths wherever they established their power; but
we have repudiated the blessings of water in such a form, and now the
Russian boor and the Finnish peasant, the Turk, the Egyptian, the basest
of people, and the barbarians of Africa, shame even the inhabitants of
England's metropolis; for every where but in our land, though the duty
of cleanliness may not be enjoined as next to godliness, as with us, yet
the benefit and the luxury of the bath are freely enjoyed, as the
natural means of ablution and of health.
"With us the man of no complaint demands
The warm ablution, just enough to clear
The sluices of the skin, enough to keep
The body sacred from indecent soil.
Still to be pure, even did it not conduce
(As much it does) to health, were greatly worth
Your daily pains."--ARMSTRONG.
POVERTY OF THE ENGLISH BAR.
With the exception, perhaps, of the lower order of the working clergy,
there is no class of the community, as a body, so desperately poor as
the bar. If it were not for extrinsic aids, one-half, at least, of its
members must necessarily starve. Of course a considerable number of them
have private property or income, and in point of fact, as a general
rule, he who goes to the bar without some such assistance and resource
is a fool--and probably a vanity-stricken fool--a fond dreamer about the
Eloquium ac famam Demosthenis aut Ciceronis;
forgetting that at the outset these worthies had the leisure to acquire,
and the ample means to pay for the best education that the world could
afford. The aspirant for forensic fame who can not do this is dreadfully
overweighted for the race, and can scarcely hope to come in a winner;
for the want of all facilities of tuition and of one's own library,
which is a thing of great cost, must be severely felt, and the necessity
of working in some extraneous occupation for his daily bread must
engross much of that time which should be devoted to study, and the
furtherance otherwise of the cardinal object he has in view. We have
read of many cases in which men have struggled triumphantly against all
such obstacles, and no doubt some there were--but for the most part, as
in Lord Eldon's instance, they were grossly exaggerated. Next, of those
who have no patrimony or private allowance from friends, the press, in
its various departments, supports a very large number. Some are editors
or contributors to magazines or reviews--daily, weekly, monthly,
quarterly; some are parliamentary reporters; some shorthand writers;
some reporters of the proceedings in the courts of law for the daily
journals and the now almost innumerous legal publications, from the
recognized reports down to the two-penny pamphlet; then some are
secretaries to public boards or bodies, some to private individuals. All
these are comparatively well off in the world, and may "bide their
time," though that time very rarely comes in any prolific shape, and
meanwhile devote their _tempora subseciva_ to the profession without the
physical necessity of doing any thing ungentlemanly. But there are
hundreds of others hanging on to the profession in a most precarious
position from day to day, who would do any thing for business, and who
taint the whole mass with the disgrace of their proceedings. These are
the persons who resort to the arts of the lowest tradesmen, such as
under-working, touting for employment, sneaking, cringing, lying, and
the like. These are the persons who, in such shabby or fraudulent cases
as may succeed, share the fees with low attorneys, and who sign
habitually, for the same pettifogging practitioners, half-guinea motions
in the batch, for half-a-crown or eighteenpence apiece; and, in short,
do any thing and every thing that is mean and infamous. Alas for the
_dignity_ of the bar! The common mechanic, who earns his regular thirty
shillings a week, the scene-shifter, the paltry play actor, enjoys more
of the comforts and real respectability of human life than one of those
miserable aspirants to the wool-sack, who spends his day in the
desperate quest for a brief, and sits at night in his garret shivering
over a shovel-full of coals and an old edition of Coke upon
Littleton.--_Frazer's Magazine._
SONNET ON THE DEATH OF WORDSWORTH.
_23d April, 1850._
Beneath the solemn shadow he doth sleep
Of his own mountains! closed the poet's eyes
To all earth's beauty--wood, and lake, and skies,
And golden mists that up the valleys creep.
Sweet Duddon's stream and Rydal's grassy steep,
The "snow-white lamb," his cottage-maiden's prize,
The cuckoo's note, and flowers, in which his wise
And gentle mind found "thoughts for tears too deep"--
These, Wordsworth! thou hast left; but oh, on these,
And the deep human sympathies that flow
Link'd with their beauty, an immortal train,
Thy benediction rests; and as the breeze
Sweeping the cloud-capp'd hills is heard below.
Descends to us a rich undying strain!
H. M. R.
[From the Dublin University Magazine.]
MAURICE TIERNAY,
THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE.
[_Continued from Page 10._]
CHAPTER II.
THE RESTAURANT "AU SCÉLÉRAT."
As I gained the street, at a considerable distance from the "Place," I
was able to increase my speed; and I did so with an eagerness as if the
world depended on my haste. At any other time I would have bethought me
of my disobedience to the Père's commands, and looked forward to meeting
him with shame and sorrow, but now I felt a kind of importance in the
charge intrusted to me. I regarded my mission as something superior to
any petty consideration of self, while the very proximity in which I had
stood to peril and death made me seem a hero in my own eyes.
At last I reached the street where we lived, and, almost breathless with
exertion, gained the door. What was my amazement, however, to find it
guarded by a sentry, a large, solemn-looking fellow, with a tattered
cocked hat on his head, and a pair of worn striped trowsers on his legs,
who cried out, as I appeared, "_Halte là!_" in a voice that at once
arrested my steps.
"Where to, youngster?" said he, in a somewhat melted tone, seeing the
shock his first words had caused me.
"I am going home, sir," said I, submissively. "I live at the third
story, in the apartment of the Père Michel."
"The Père Michel will live there no longer, my boy; his apartment is now
in the Temple," said he, slowly.
"In the Temple!" said I, whose memory at once recalled my father's fate;
and then, unable to control my feelings, I sat down upon the steps, and
burst into tears.
"There, there, child, you must not cry thus," said he; "these are not
days when one should weep over misfortunes; they come too fast and too
thick on all of us for that. The Père was your tutor, I suppose?"
I nodded.
"And your father--where is he?"
"Dead."
He made a sign to imitate the guillotine, and I assented by another nod.
"Was he a royalist, boy?"
"He was an officer in the _gardes du corps_," said I, proudly. The
soldier shook his head mournfully, but with what meaning I know not.
"And your mother, boy?"
"I do not know where she is," said I, again relapsing into tears at the
thought of my utter desolation. The old soldier leaned upon his musket
in profound thought, and for some time did not utter a word. At last he
said,
"There is nothing but the Hotel de Ville for you, my child. They say
that the Republic adopts all the orphans of France. What she does with
them I can not tell."
"But I can, though," replied I, fiercely: "the Noyades or the Seine are
a quick and sure provision; I saw eighty drowned one morning below the
Pont Neuf myself."
"That tongue of yours will bring you into trouble, youngster," said he,
reprovingly: "mind that you say not such things as these."
"What worse fortune can betide me, than to see my father die at the
guillotine, and my last, my only friend, carried away to prison."
"You have no care for your own neck, then?"
"Why should I--what value has life for me?"
"Then it will be spared to you," said he, sententiously; "mark my words,
lad. You need never fear death till you begin to love life. Get up, my
poor boy, you must not be found there when the relief comes, and that
will be soon. This is all that I have," said he, placing three sous in
my palm, "which will buy a loaf; to-morrow there may be better luck in
store for you."
I shook the rough hand he offered, with cordial gratitude, and resolved
to bear myself as like a man as I could. I drew myself up, touched my
cap in soldier-like fashion, and cried out. "Adieu;" and then,
descending into the street, hurried away to hide the tears that were
almost suffocating me.
Hour after hour I walked the streets; the mere act of motion seemed to
divert my grief, and it was only when foot-sore and weary, that I could
march no longer, and my sorrows came back in full force, and overwhelmed
me in their flow. It was less pride or shame than a sense of my utter
helplessness, that prevented me addressing any one of the hundreds who
passed me. I bethought me of my inability to do any thing for my own
support, and it was this consciousness that served to weigh me down more
than all else; and yet I felt with what devotion I could serve him who
would but treat me with the kindness he might bestow upon his dog; I
fancied with what zeal I could descend to very slavery for one word of
affection. The streets were crowded with people; groups were gathered
here and there, either listening to some mob orator of the day, or
hearing the newspapers read aloud. I tried, by forcing my way into the
crowd, to feel myself "one of them," and to think that I had my share of
interest in what was going forward, but in vain. Of the topics discussed
I knew nothing, and of the bystanders none even noticed me.
High-swelling phrases met the ear at every moment, that sounded
strangely enough to me. They spoke of Fraternity--of that brotherhood
which linked man to man in close affection; of Equality--that made all
sharers in this world's goods; of Liberty--that gave freedom to every
noble aspiration and generous thought; and, for an instant, carried away
by the glorious illusion, I even forgot my solitary condition, and felt
proud of my heritage as a youth of France I looked around me, however,
and what faces met my gaze! The same fearful countenances I had seen
around the scaffold: the wretches, blood-stained, and influenced by
passion, their bloated cheeks and strained eye-balls glowing with
intemperance; their oaths, their gestures, their very voices having
something terrible in them. The mockery soon disgusted me, and I moved
away, again to wander about without object or direction through the
weary streets. It was past midnight when I found myself, without knowing
where I was, in a large open space, in the midst of which a solitary
lamp was burning. I approached it, and, to my horror, saw that it was
the guillotine, over which, in mournful cadence, a lantern swung,
creaking its chain as the night-wind stirred it. The dim outline of the
fearful scaffold, the fitful light that fell upon the platform, and the
silence, all conspired to strike terror into my heart; all I had so
lately witnessed seemed to rise up again before me, and the victims
seemed to stand up again, pale, and livid, and shuddering as last I saw
them.
I knelt down, and tried to pray, but terror was too powerful to suffer
my thoughts to take this direction, and, half-fainting with fear and
exhaustion, I lay down upon the ground and slept--slept beneath the
platform of the guillotine. Not a dream crossed my slumber, nor did I
awake till dawn of day, when the low rumbling of the peasants' carts
aroused me, as they were proceeding to the market. I know not why or
whence, but I arose from the damp earth, and looked about me with a more
daring and courageous spirit than I had hitherto felt. It was May; the
first bright rays of sunshine were slanting along the "Place," and the
fresh, brisk air felt invigorating and cheering. Whither to? asked I of
myself, and my eyes turned from the dense streets and thoroughfares of
the great city to the far-off hills beyond the barrier, and for a moment
I hesitated which road to take. I almost seemed to feel as if the
decision involved my whole future fortune--whether I should live and die
in the humble condition of a peasant, or play for a great stake in life.
"Yes," said I, after a short hesitation, "I will remain here; in the
terrible conflict going forward many must be new adventurers, and never
was any one more greedy to learn the trade than myself. I will throw
sorrow behind me. Yesterday's tears are the last I shall shed. Now for a
bold heart and a ready will, and here goes for the world!" With these
stout words I placed my cap jauntily on one side of my head, and, with a
fearless air marched off for the very centre of the city.
For some hours I amused myself gazing at the splendid shops, or staring
in at the richly-decorated cafés, where the young celebrities of the day
were assembled at breakfast, in all the extravagance of the new-fangled
costume. Then I followed the guard to the parade at the "Carousel," and
listened to the band; quitting which, I wandered along the quays,
watching the boats, as they dragged the river, in search of murdered
bodies or suicides. Thence I returned to the Palais Royal, and listened
to the news of the day, as read out by some elected enlightener of his
countrymen.
By what chance I know not, but at last my rambling steps brought me
opposite to the great, solemn-looking towers of the "Temple." The gloomy
prison, within whose walls hundreds were then awaiting the fate which
already their friends had suffered; little groups, gathered here and
there in the open Place, were communicating to the prisoners by signs
and gestures, and from many a small-grated window, at an immense height,
handkerchiefs were seen to wave in recognition of those below. These
signals seemed to excite neither watchfulness nor prevention; indeed,
they needed none, and perhaps the very suspense they excited was a
torture that pleased the inhuman jailers. Whatever the reason, the
custom was tolerated, and was apparently enjoyed at that moment by
several of the turnkeys, who sat at the windows, much amused at the
efforts made to communicate. Interested by the sight, I sat down upon a
stone bench to watch the scene, and fancied that I could read something
of the rank and condition of those who signalled from below their
messages of hope or fear. At last a deep bell within the prison tolled
the hour of noon, and now every window was suddenly deserted. It was the
hour for the muster of the prisoners, which always took place before the
dinner at one o'clock. The curious groups soon after broke up. A few
lingered round the gate, with, perhaps some hope of admission to visit
their friends but the greater number departed.
My hunger was now such, that I could no longer deny myself the
long-promised meal, and I looked about me for a shop where I might buy a
loaf of bread. In my search, I suddenly found myself opposite an immense
shop, where viands of every tempting description were ranged with all
that artistic skill so purely Parisian, making up a picture whose
composition Snyders would not have despised. Over the door was a
painting of a miserable wretch, with hands bound behind him, and his
hair cut close in the well-known crop for the scaffold, and underneath
was written, "Au Scélérat;" while on a larger board, in gilt letters,
ran the inscription:
"Boivin Père et Fils, Traiteurs pour M. lea Condammées."
I could scarcely credit my eyes as I read and re-read this infamous
announcement; but there it stood, and in the crowd that poured
incessantly to and from the door, I saw the success that attended the
traffic. A ragged knot were gathered around the window, eagerly gazing
at something, which, by their exclamations, seemed to claim all their
admiration. I pressed forward to see what it was, and beheld a miniature
guillotine, which, turned by a wheel, was employed to chop the meat for
sausages. This it was that formed the great object of attraction, even
to those to whom the prototype had grown flat and uninteresting.
Disgusted as I was by this shocking sight, I stood watching all that
went forward within with a strange interest. It was a scene of incessant
bustle and movement, for now, as one o'clock drew nigh, various dinners
were getting ready for the prisoners, while parties of their friends
were assembling inside. Of these latter, there seemed persons of every
rank and condition: some, dressed in all the brilliancy of the _mode_;
others, whose garments bespoke direst poverty. There were women, too,
whose costume emulated the classic drapery of the ancients, and who
displayed, in their looped togas, no niggard share of their forms; while
others, in shabby mourning, sat in obscure corners, not noticing the
scene before them, nor noticed themselves. A strange equipage, with two
horses extravagantly bedizened with rosettes and bouquets, stood at the
door; and as I looked, a pale, haggard-looking man, whose foppery in
dress contrasted oddly with his care-worn expression, hurried from the
shop, and sprung into the carriage. In doing so, a pocket-book fell from
his pocket. I took it up, but as I did so, the carriage was already
away, and far beyond my power to overtake it.
Without stopping to examine my prize, or hesitating for a second, I
entered the _restaurant_, and asked for M. Boivin.
"Give your orders to me, boy," said a man busily at work behind the
counter.
"My business is with himself," said I, stoutly.
"Then you'll have to wait with some patience," said he, sneeringly.
"I can do so," was my answer, and I sat down in the shop.
I might have been half-an-hour thus seated, when an enormously fat man,
with a huge "_bonnet rouge_" on his head, entered from an inner room,
and, passing close to where I was, caught sight of me.
"Who are you, sirrah--what brings you here?"
"I want to speak with M. Boivin."
"Then speak," said he, placing his hand upon his immense chest.
"It must be alone," said I.
"How so, alone, sirrah?" said he, growing suddenly pale; "I have no
secrets--I know of nothing that may not be told before all the world."
Though he said this in a kind of appeal to all around, the dubious looks
and glances interchanged seemed to make him far from comfortable.
"So you refuse me, then," said I, taking up my cap, and preparing to
depart.
"Come hither," said he, leading the way into the room from which he had
emerged. It was a very small chamber; the most conspicuous ornaments of
which were busts and pictures of the various celebrities of the
revolution. Some of these latter were framed ostentatiously, and one,
occupying the post of honor above the chimney, at once attracted me, for
in a glance I saw that it was a portrait of him who owned the
pocket-book, and bore beneath it the name "Robespierre."
"Now, sir, for your communication," said Boivin; "and take care that it
is of sufficient importance to warrant the interview you have asked
for."
"I have no fears on that score," said I, calmly, still scanning the
features of the portrait, and satisfying myself of their identity.
"Look at me, sir, and not at that picture," said Boivin.
"And yet it is of M. Robespierre I have to speak," said I, coolly.
"How so--of M. Robespierre, boy? What is the meaning of this? If it be a
snare--if this be a trick, you never leave this spot living," cried he,
as he placed a massive hand on each of my shoulders, and shook me
violently.
"I am not so easily to be terrified, Citoyen," said I; "nor have I any
secret cause for fear--whatever you may have. My business is of another
kind. This morning, in passing out to his carriage, he dropped his
pocket-book, which I picked up. Its contents may well be of a kind that
should not be read by other eyes than his own. My request is, then, that
you will seal it up before me, and then send some one along with me,
while I restore it to its owner."
"Is this a snare--what secret mischief have we here?" said Boivin, half
aloud, as he wiped the cold drops of perspiration from his forehead.
"Any mishap that follows will depend upon your refusal to do what I
ask."
"How so--I never refused it; you dare not tell M. Robespierre that I
refused, sirrah?"
"I will tell him nothing that is untrue," said I, calmly; for already a
sense of power had gifted me with composure. "If M. Robespierre--"
"Who speaks of me here?" cried that identical personage, as he dashed
hurriedly into the room, and then, not waiting for the reply, went on,
"You must send out your scouts on every side--I lost my pocket-book as I
left this a while ago."
"It is here, sir," said I, presenting it at once.
"How--where was it found--in whose keeping has it been, boy?"
"In mine only; I took it from the ground the same moment that you
dropped it, and then came here to place it in M. Boivin's hands."
"Who has taken care of it since that time," continued Robespierre, with
a slow and sneering accentuation on every word.
"The pocket-book has never left my possession since it quitted yours,"
was my reply.
"Just so," broke in Boivin, now slowly recovering from his terror. "Of
its contents I know nothing; nor have I sought to know any thing."
Robespierre looked at me, as if to corroborate this statement, and I
nodded my head in acquiescence.
"Who is your father, boy?"
"I have none--he was guillotined."
"His name?"
"Tiernay."
"Ah, I remember; he was called L'Irlandais."
"The same."
"A famous Royalist was that same Tiernay, and, doubtless, contrived to
leave a heritage of his opinions to his son."
"He left me nothing--I have neither house, nor home, nor even bread to
eat."
"But you have a head to plan, and a heart to feel, youngster; and it is
better that fellows like you should not want a dinner. Boivin, look to
it that he is taken care of. In a few days I will relieve you of the
charge. You will remain here, boy; there are worse resting-places, I
promise you. There are men who call themselves teachers of the people,
who would ask no better life than free quarters on Boivin. And so
saying, he hurriedly withdrew, leaving me face to face with my host.
"So then, youngster," said Boivin, as he scratched his ear thoughtfully,
"I have gained a pensioner! _Parbleu!_ if life were not an uncertain
thing in these times, there's no saying how long we might not be blessed
with your amiable company."
"You shall not be burthened heavily, _Citoyen_" said I; "Let me have my
dinner--I have not eaten since yesterday morning, and I will go my ways
peacefully."
"Which means straight to Robespierre's dwelling, to tell him that I have
turned you out of doors--eh, sirrah?"
"You mistake me much," said I; "this would be sorry gratitude for eaten
bread; I meant what I said--that I will not be an unwelcome guest, even
though the alternative be, as it is, something very nigh starvation."
Boivin did not seem clearly to comprehend the meaning of what I said; or
perhaps my whole conduct and bearing puzzled him, for he made no reply
for several seconds. At last, with a kind of sigh, he said,
"Well well, it can not be helped; it must be even as he wished, though
the odds are, he'll never think more about him Come, lad, you shall have
your dinner."
I followed him through a narrow, unlighted passage, which opened into a
room, where, at a long table, were seated a number of men and boys at
dinner. Some were dressed as cooks--others wore a kind of gray blouse,
with a badge upon the arm bearing the name "Boivin" in large letters,
and were, as I afterward learned, the messengers employed to carry
refreshments into the prison, and who, by virtue of this sign, were
freely admitted within the gates.
Taking my place at the board, I proceeded to eat with a voracity that
only a long fast could have excused; and thus took but little heed of my
companions, whose solecisms in table etiquette might otherwise have
amused me.
"Art a _marmiton_, thou?" asked an elderly man in a cook's cap, as he
stared fixedly at me for some seconds.
"No," said I, helping myself, and eating away as before.
"Thou can'st never be a commissionaire, friend, with an appetite like
that," cried another; "I wouldn't trust thee to carry a casserole to
the fire."
"Nor shall I be," said I, coolly.
"What trade, then, has the good fortune to possess your shining
abilities?"
"A trade that thrives well just now, friend-pass me the flask."
"Indeed, and what may it be?"
"Can you not guess, _Citoyen_," said I, "if I tell you that it was never
more in vogue; and, if there be some who will not follow it, they'll
wear their heads just as safely by holding their peace."
_"Parbleu!_ thou hast puzzled me," said the chief cook; "and if thou
hast not a coffin-maker--." A roar of merriment cut short his speech, in
which I myself could not but join heartily.
"That is, I know," said I, "a thriving business; but mine is even
better; and, not to mystify you longer, I'll just tell you what I
am--which is, simply, a friend of the _Citoyen_ Robespierre."
The blow told with full force; and I saw, in the terrified looks that
were interchanged around the table, that my sojourn among them, whether
destined to be of short or long duration, would not be disturbed by
further liberties. It was truly a reign of terror that same period! The
great agent of every thing was the vague and shadowy dread of some
terrible vengeance, against which precautions were all in vain. Men met
each other with secret misgivings, and parted with the same dreadful
distrust. The ties of kindred were all broken; brotherly affection died
out. Existence was become like the struggle for life upon some
shipwrecked raft, where each sought safety by his neighbor's doom! At
such a time--with such terrible teachings--children became men in all
the sterner features of character: cruelty is a lesson so easily
learned.
As for myself, energetic and ambitious by nature, the ascendency my
first assumption of power suggested was too grateful a passion to be
relinquished. The name--whose spell was like a talisman, because now the
secret engine by which I determined to work out my fortune--Robespierre
had become to my imagination like the slave of Aladdin's lamp; and to
conjure him up was to be all-powerful. Even to Boivin himself this
influence extended; and it was easy to perceive that he regarded the
whole narrative of the pocket-book as a mere fable, invented to obtain a
position as a spy over his household.
I was not unwilling to encourage the belief--it added to my importance,
by increasing the fear I inspired; and thus I walked indolently about,
giving myself those airs of "mouchard" that I deemed most fitting, and
taking a mischievous delight in the tenor I was inspiring.
The indolence of my life, however, soon wearied me, and I began to long
for some occupation, or some pursuit. Teeming with excitement as the
world was--every day, every hour, brimful of events--it was impossible
to sit calmly on the beach, and watch the great, foaming current of
human passions, without longing to be in the stream. Had I been a man at
that time, I should have become a furious orator of the Mountain--an
impassioned leader of the people. The impulse to stand foremost, to take
a bold and prominent position, would have carried me to any lengths. I
had caught up enough of the horrid fanaticism of the time, to think that
there was something grand and heroic in contempt for human suffering;
that a man rose proudly above all the weakness of his nature, when, in
the pursuit of some great object, he stifled within his breast every
throb of affection--every sentiment of kindness and mercy. Such were the
teachings rife at the time--such the first lessons that boyhood learned;
and oh! what a terrible hour had that been for humanity if the
generation then born had grown up to manhood, unchastened and
unconverted!
But to return to my daily life. As I perceived that a week had now
elapsed, and the Citizen Robespierre had not revisited the "restaurant,"
nor taken any interest in my fate or fortunes, I began to fear lest
Boivin should master his terror regarding me, and take heart to put me
out of doors--an event which, in my present incertitude, would have been
sorely inconvenient. I resolved, therefore, to practice a petty
deception on my host, to sustain the influence of terror over him. This
was, to absent myself every day at a certain hour, under the pretense of
visiting my patron--letting fall, from time to time, certain indications
to show in what part of the city I had been, and occasionally, as if in
an unguarded moment, condescending to relate some piece of popular
gossip. None ventured to inquire the source of my information--not one
dared to impugn its veracity. Whatever their misgivings in secret, to
myself they displayed the most credulous faith. Nor was their trust so
much misplaced, for I had, in reality, become a perfect chronicle of all
that went forward in Paris--never missing a debate in the Convention,
where my retentive memory could carry away almost verbally all that I
heard--ever present at every public fête or procession, whether the
occasions were some insulting desecration of their former faith, or some
tasteless mockery of heathen ceremonial.
My powers of mimicry, too, enabled me to imitate all the famous
characters of the period; and in my assumed inviolability, I used to
exhibit the uncouth gestures and spluttering utterance of Marat--the
wild and terrible ravings of Danton--and even the reedy treble of my own
patron, Robespierre, as he screamed denunciations against the enemies of
the people. It is true these exhibitions of mine were only given in
secret to certain parties, who, by a kind of instinct, I felt could be
trusted.
Such was my life, as one day, returning from the Convention, I beheld a
man affixing to a wall a great placard, to which the passing crowd
seemed to pay deep attention. It was a decree of the Committee of Public
Safety, containing the names of above seven hundred royalists, who were
condemned to death, and who were to be executed in three "tournées," on
three successive days.
For some time back the mob had not been gratified with a spectacle of
this nature. In the ribald language of the day, the "holy guillotine had
grown thirsty from long drought;" and they read the announcement with
greedy eyes, commenting as they went upon those whose names were
familiar to them. There were many of noble birth among the proscribed,
but by far the greater number were priests, the whole sum of whose
offending seemed written in the simple and touching words, "_ancien
curé_," of such a parish! It was strange to mark the bitterness of
invective with which the people loaded these poor and innocent men, as
though they were the source of all their misfortunes. The lazy indolence
with which they reproached them, seemed ten times more offensive in
their eyes than the lives of ease and affluence led by the nobility. The
fact was, they could not forgive men of their own rank and condition
what they pardoned in the well-born and the noble! an inconsistency that
has characterized democracy in other situations besides this.
As I ran my eyes down the list of those confined in the Temple, I came
to a name which smote my heart with a pang of ingratitude as well as
sorrow--the "Père Michel Delannois, soi disant curé de St. Blois"--my
poor friend and protector was there among the doomed! If up to that
moment, I had made no effort to see him, I must own the reason lay in my
own selfish feeling of shame--the dread that he should mark the change
that had taken place in me--a change that I felt extended to all about
me, and showed itself in my manner, as it influenced my every action. It
was not alone that I lost the obedient air and quiet submissiveness of
the child, but I had assumed the very extravagance of that democratic
insolence which was the mode among the leading characters of the time.
How should I present myself before him, the very impersonation of all
the vices against which he used to warn me--how exhibit the utter
failure of all his teachings and his hopes? What would this be but to
imbitter his reflections needlessly. Such were the specious reasons with
which I fed my self-love, and satisfied my conscience; but now, as I
read his name in that terrible catalogue, their plausibility served me
no longer, and at last I forgot myself to remember only him.
"I will see him at once," thought I, "whatever it may cost me--I will
stay beside him for his last few hours of life; and when he carries with
him from this world many an evil memory of shame and treachery,
ingratitude from me shall not increase the burden." And with this
resolve I turned my steps homeward.
CHAPTER III.
THE "TEMPLE."
At the time of which I write, there was but one motive-principle
throughout France--"TERROR." By the agency of terror and the threat of
denunciation was every thing carried on, not only in the public
departments of the state, but in all the common occurrences of every-day
life. Fathers used it toward their children--children toward their
parents; mothers coerced their daughters--daughters, in turn, braved the
authority of their mothers. The tribunal of public opinion, open to all,
scattered its decrees with a reckless cruelty--denying to-day what it
had decreed but yesterday, and at last obliterating every trace of
"right" or "principle," in a people who now only lived for the passing
hour, and who had no faith in the future, even of this world.
Among the very children at play, this horrible doctrine had gained a
footing; the tyrant urchin, whose ingenuity enabled him to terrorize,
became the master of his playfellows. I was not slow in acquiring the
popular education of the period, and soon learned that fear was a "Bank"
on which one might draw at will. Already the domineering habit had given
to my air and manner all the insolence of seeming power; and, while a
mere boy in years, I was a man in all the easy assumption of a certain
importance.
It was with a bold and resolute air I entered the restaurant, and
calling Boivin aside, said,
"I have business in the Temple this morning, Boivin; see to it that I
shall not be denied admittance."
"I am not governor of the jail," grunted Boivin, sulkily, "nor have I
the privilege to pass any one."
"But your boys have the entree; the 'rats' (so were they called) are
free to pass in and out."
"Ay, and I'm responsible for the young rascals, too, and for any thing
that may be laid to their charge."
"And you shall extend this same protection to _me_, Master Boivin, for
one day, at least. Nay, my good friend, there's no use in sulking about
it. A certain friend of ours, whose name I need not speak aloud, is
little in the habit of being denied any thing: are you prepared for the
consequence of disobeying his orders?"
"Let me see that they are his orders," said he, sturdily; "who tells me
that such is his will?"
"I do," was my brief reply, as, with a look of consummate effrontery, I
drew myself up, and stared him insolently in the face.
"Suppose, then, that I have my doubts on the matter; suppose--"
"I will suppose all you wish, Boivin," said I, interrupting, "and even
something more; for I will suppose myself returning to the quarter
whence I have just come, and within one hour--ay, within one hour,
Boivin--bringing back with me a written order, not to pass me into the
Temple, but to receive the charge of the Citizen Jean Baptiste Boivin,
and be accountable for the same to the Committee of Public Safety."
He trembled from head to foot as I said these words, and in his shaking
cheeks and fallen jaw I saw that my spell was working.
"And now, I ask for the last time, do you consent or not?"
"How is it to be done?" cried he, in a voice of downright wretchedness.
"You are not 'inscribed' at the sécretaries' office as one of the
'rats.'"
"I should hope not," said I, cutting him short; "but I may take the
place of one for an hour or so. Tristan is about my own size; his blouse
and badge will just suit me."
"Ay, leave me to a fine of a thousand francs, if you should be found
out," muttered Boivin, "not to speak of a worse mayhap."
"Exactly so--far worse in case of your refusing: but there sounds the
bell for mustering the prisoners; it is now too late."
"Not so--not so," cried Boivin, eagerly, as he saw me prepared to leave
the house. "You shall go in Tristan's place. Send him here, that he may
tell you every thing about the 'service,' and give you his blouse and
badge."
I was not slow in availing myself of the permission; nor was Tristan
sorry to find a substitute. He was a dull, depressed-looking boy, not
over communicative as to his functions, merely telling me that I was to
follow the others--that I came fourth in the line--to answer when my
name was called "Tristan," and to put the money I received in my
leathern pocket, without uttering a word, lest the jailers should notice
it.
To accoutre myself in the white cotton night-cap and the blouse of the
craft, was the work of a few seconds, and then, with a great knife in my
girdle, and a capacious pocket slung at my side, I looked every inch a
"_Marmiton_."
In the kitchen, the bustle had already begun; and half a dozen cooks,
with as many under-cooks, were dealing out "portions" with all the speed
of a well-practiced performance. Nothing short of great habit could have
prevented the confusion degenerating into downright anarchy. The
"service" was, indeed, effected with a wonderful rapidity, and certain
phrases, uttered with speed, showed how it progressed. "_Maigre des
Curés_"--"finished." "Bouillon for the 'expectants'"--"ready here."
"Canards aux olives des condamnés"--"all served." "Red partridges for
the reprieved at the upper table"--"dispatched." Such were the quick
demands, and no less quick replies, that rung out, amidst the crash of
plates, knifes, and glasses, and the incessant movement of feet, until,
at last, we were all marshaled in a long line, and, preceded by a drum,
set out for the prison.
As we drew near, the heavy gates opened to receive, and closed behind us
with a loud bang, that I could not help feeling must have smote heavily
on many a heart that had passed there. We were now in a large
court-yard, where several doors led off, each guarded by a sentinel,
whose ragged clothes and rusty accoutrements proclaimed a true soldier
of the republic. One of the large hurdles used for carrying the
prisoners to the "Place" stood in one corner, and two or three workmen
were busied in repairing it for the coming occasion.
So much I had time to observe, as we passed along; and now we entered a
dimly-lighted corridor, of great extent, passing down which, we emerged
into a second "Cour," traversed by a species of canal or river, over
which a bridge led. In the middle of this was a strongly-barred iron
gate, guarded by two sentries. As we arrived here, our names were called
aloud by a species of turnkey, and at the call "Tristan" I advanced,
and, removing the covers from the different dishes, submitted them for
inspection to an old, savage-looking fellow, who, with a long steel
fork, prodded the pieces of meat, as though any thing could have been
concealed within them. Meanwhile another fellow examined my cotton cap
and pocket, and passed his hands along my arms and body. The whole did
not last more than a few minutes, and the word "forward" was given to
pass on. The gloom of the place--the silence, only broken by the heavy
bang of an iron-barred door, or the clank of chains--the sad thoughts of
the many who trod these corridors on their way to death, depressed me
greatly, and equally unprepared me for what was to come; for as we drew
near the great hall, the busy hum of voices, the sound of laughter, and
the noises of a large assembly in full converse, suddenly burst upon the
ear, and as the wide doors were thrown open, I beheld above a hundred
people, who, either gathered in single groups, or walking up and down in
parties, seemed all in the fullest enjoyment of social intercourse.
A great table, with here and there a large flagon of water, or a huge
loaf of the coarse bread used by the peasantry, ran from end to end of
the chamber. A few had already taken their places at this; but some were
satisfied with laying a cap or a kerchief on the bench opposite their
accustomed seat; while others again had retired into windows and
corners, as if to escape the general gaze, and partake of their humble
meal in solitude.
Whatever restrictions prison discipline might have exercised elsewhere,
here the widest liberty seemed to prevail. The talk was loud, and even
boisterous; the manner to the turnkeys exhibited nothing of fear: the
whole assemblage presented rather the aspect of a gathering of riotous
republicans, than of a band of prisoners under sentence. And yet such
were the greater number; and the terrible slip of paper attached to the
back of each, with a date, told the day on which he was to die.
As I lingered to gaze on this strange gathering, I was admonished to
move on, and now perceived that my companion had advanced to the end of
the hall, by which a small flight of stone steps led out upon a terrace,
at the end of which we entered another, and not less spacious chamber,
equally crowded and noisy. Here the company were of both sexes, and of
every grade and condition of rank, from the highest noble of the once
court, to the humblest peasant of La Vendée. If the sounds of mirth and
levity were less frequent, the buzz of conversation was, to the full, as
loud as in the lower hall, where, from difference of condition in life,
the scenes passing presented stranger and more curious contrasts. In one
corner a group of peasants were gathered around a white-haired priest,
who, in a low but earnest voice, was uttering his last exhortation to
them; in another, some young and fashionably-dressed men were exhibiting
to a party of ladies the very airs and graces by which they would have
adorned a saloon; here, was a party at piquet; there, a little group
arranging, for the last time, their household cares, and settling, with
a few small coins, the account of mutual expenditure. Of the ladies,
several were engaged at needlework, some little preparation for the
morrow--the last demand that ever vanity was to make of them!
Although there was matter of curiosity in all around me, my eyes sought
for but one object, the curé of St. Blois. Twice or thrice, from the
similarity of dress, I was deceived, and at last, when I really did
behold him, as he sat alone in a window, reading, I could scarcely
satisfy myself of the reality. He was lividly pale; his eyes deep sunk,
and surrounded with two dark circles, while along his worn cheek the
tears had marked two channels of purple color. What need of the
guillotine there; the lamp of life was in its last flicker without it.
Our names were called, and the meats placed upon the table. Just as the
head turnkey was about to give the order to be seated, a loud commotion,
and a terrible uproar in the court beneath, drew every one to the
window. It was a hurdle which, emerging from an archway, broke down from
overcrowding; and now the confusion of prisoners, jailors, and sentries,
with plunging horses and screaming sufferers, made a scene of the
wildest uproar. Chained two by two, the prisoners were almost helpless,
and in their efforts to escape injury made the most terrific struggles.
Such were the instincts of life in those on the very road to death!
Resolving to profit by the moment of confusion, I hastened to the
window, where alone, unmoved by the general commotion, sat the Père
Michel. He lifted his glassy eyes as I came near, and, in a low, mild
voice, said,
"Thanks, my good boy, but I have no money to pay thee; nor does it
matter much now, it is but another day."
I could have cried as I heard these sad words, but mastering emotions
which would have lost time so precious, I drew close, and whispered,
"Père Michel, it is I, your own Maurice!"
He started, and a deep flush suffused his cheek, and then stretching out
his hand, he pushed back my cap, and parted the hair off my forehead, as
if doubting the reality of what he saw, when, with a weak voice, he
said,
"No, no, thou art not my own Maurice. _His_ eyes shone not with that
worldly lustre thine do; _his_ brow was calm and fair as children's
should be--_thine_ is marked with manhood's craft and subtlety; and yet
thou art like him."
A low sob broke from me as I listened to his words, and the tears gushed
forth, and rolled in torrents down my cheeks.
"Yes," cried he, clasping me in his arms, "thou art my own dear boy. I
know thee now: but how art thou here, and thus?" and he touched my
"blouse" as he spoke.
"I came to see and to save you, Père," said I. "Nay, do not try to
discourage me, but rather give me all your aid. I saw _her_--I was with
her in her last moments at the guillotine; she gave me a message for
you, but this you shall never hear till we are without these walls."
"It can not be, it can not be," said he, sorrowfully.
"It can, and shall be," said I, resolutely. "I have merely assumed this
dress for the occasion; I have friends, powerful and willing to protect
me. Let us change robes; give me that 'soutane,' and put on the blouse.
When you leave this, hasten to the old garden of the chapel, and wait
for my coming; I will join you there before night."
"It can not be," replied he, again.
"Again I say, it shall, and must be. Nay, if you still refuse, there
shall be two victims, for I will tear off the dress here where I stand,
and openly declare myself the son of the royalist Tiernay."
Already the commotion in the court beneath was beginning to subside, and
even now the turnkeys' voices were heard in the refectory, recalling the
prisoners to table, another moment and it would have been too late; it
was, then, less by persuasion than by actual force I compelled him to
yield, and pulling off his black serge gown, drew over his shoulders my
yellow blouse, and placed upon his head the white cap of the "Marmiton."
The look of shame and sorrow of the poor curé would have betrayed him at
once, if any had given themselves the trouble to look at him.
"And thou, my poor child," said he, as he saw me array myself in his
priestly dress, "what is to be thy fate."
"All will depend upon you, Père Michel," said I, holding him by the arm,
and trying to fix his wandering attention. "Once out of the prison,
write to Boivin, the _restaurateur_ of the '_Scélérat_,' and tell him
that an escaped convict has scruples for the danger into which he has
brought a poor boy, one of his 'Marmitons,' and whom, by a noxious drug,
he has lulled into insensibility, while having exchanged clothes, he has
managed his escape. Boivin will comprehend the danger he himself runs by
leaving me here. All will go well--and now there's not a moment to lose.
Take up your basket, and follow the others."
"But the falsehood of all this," cried the Père.
"But, your life and mine, too, lost, if you refuse," said I, pushing him
away.
"Oh, Maurice, how changed have you become!" cried he, sorrowfully.
"You will see a greater change in me yet, as I lie in the sawdust
beneath the scaffold," said I, hastily. "Go, go."
There was, indeed, no more time to lose. The muster of the prisoners was
forming at one end of the chamber, while the "Marmitons" were gathering
up their plates and dishes, previous to departure, at the other; and it
was only by the decisive step of laying myself down within the recesses
of the window, in the attitude of one overcome by sleep, that I could
force him to obey my direction. I could feel his presence as he bent
over me, and muttered something that must have been a prayer. I could
know, without seeing, that he still lingered near me, but as I never
stirred, he seemed to feel that my resolve was not to be shaken, and at
last he moved slowly away.
At first the noise and clamor sounded like the crash of some desperate
conflict, but by degrees this subsided, and I could hear the names
called aloud, and the responses of the prisoners, as they were "told
off" in parties from the different parts of the prison. Tender
leave-takings and affectionate farewells from many who never expected to
meet again accompanied these, and the low sobs of anguish were mingled
with the terrible chaos of voices; and at last I heard the name of
"Michel Delannois:" I felt as if my death-summons was in the words
"Michel Delannois."
"That crazy priest can neither hear nor see, I believe," said the
jailor, savagely. "Will no one answer for him?"
"He is asleep yonder in the window," replied a voice from the crowd.
"Let him sleep, then," said the turnkey "when awake he gives us no peace
with his prayers and exhortations."
"He has eaten nothing for three days," observed another; "he is,
perhaps, overcome by weakness more than by sleep."
"Be it so! if he only lie quiet, I care not," rejoined the jailor, and
proceeded to the next name on the list.
The monotonous roll-call, the heat, the attitude in which I was lying,
all conspired to make me drowsy; even the very press of sensations that
crowded to my brain lent their aid, and at last I slept as soundly as
ever I had done in my bed at night. I was dreaming of the dark alleys in
the wood of Belleville, where so often I had strolled of an evening with
Père Michel; I was fancying that we were gathering the fresh violets
beneath the old trees, when a rude hand shook my shoulder, and I awoke.
One of the turnkeys and Boivin stood over me, and I saw at once that my
plan had worked well.
"Is this the fellow?" said the turnkey, pushing me rudely with his foot.
"Yes," replied Boivin, white with fear; "this is the boy; his name is
Tristan." The latter words were accompanied with a look of great
significance toward me.
"What care we how he is called; let us hear in what manner he came
here."
"I can tell you little," said I, staring and looking wildly around; "I
must have been asleep and dreaming, too."
"The letter," whispered Boivin to the turnkey--"the letter says that he
was made to inhale some poisonous drug, and that while insensible--"
"Bah!" said the other, derisively, "this will not gain credit here;
there has been complicity in the affair, Master Boivin. The
_commissaire_ is not the man to believe a trumped-up tale of the sort;
besides, you are well aware that you are responsible for these 'rats' of
yours. It is a private arrangement between you and the _commissaire_,
and it is not very probable that he'll get himself into a scrape for
you."
"Then what are we to do?" cried Boivin, passionately, as he wrung his
hands in despair.
"I know what I should, in a like case," was the dry reply.
"And that is--?"
"Laisser aller!" was the curt rejoinder. "The young rogue has passed for
a curé for the last afternoon; I'd even let him keep up the disguise a
little longer, and it will be all the same by this time to-morrow."
"You'd send me to the guillotine for another?" said I, boldly; "thanks
for the good intention my friend; but Boivin knows better than to follow
your counsel. Hear me one moment," said I, addressing the latter, and
drawing him to one side--"if you don't liberate me within a quarter of
an hour, I'll denounce you and yours to the commissary. I know well
enough what goes on at the Scélérat--you understand me well. If a priest
has really made his escape from the prison, you are not clean-handed
enough to meet the accusation; see to it then, Boivin, that I may be
free at once."
"Imp of Satan," exclaimed Boivin, grinding his teeth, "I have never
enjoyed ease or quietness since the first hour I saw you."
"It may cost a couple of thousand francs, Boivin," said I, calmly; "but
what then? Better that than take your seat along with us to-morrow in
the 'Charrette rouge.'"
"Maybe he's right, after all," muttered the turnkey in a half whisper;
"speak to the commissary."
"Yes," said I, affecting an air of great innocence and simplicity--"tell
him that a poor orphan boy, without friends or home, claims his pity."
"_Scélérat infame_!" cried Boivin, as he shook his fist at me, and then
followed the turnkey to the commissary's apartment.
In less time than I could have believed possible, Boivin returned with
one of the upper jailors, and told me in a few dry words that I was
free. "But, mark me," added he, "we part here--come what may, you never
shall plant foot within my doors again."
"Agreed," said I, gayly; "the world has other dupes as easy to play
upon, and I was getting well nigh weary of you."
"Listen to the scoundrel!" muttered Boivin; "what will he say next?"
"Simply this," rejoined I--"that as these are not becoming garments for
me to wear--for I'm neither 'Père' nor 'Frère'--I must have others ere I
quit this."
If the insolence of my demand occasioned some surprise at first, a
little cool persistence on my part showed that compliance would be the
better policy; and, after conferring together for a few minutes, during
which I heard the sound of money, the turnkey retired, and came back
speedily with a jacket and cap belonging to one of the drummers of the
"Republican Guard"--a gaudy, tasteless affair enough, but, as a
disguise, nothing could have been more perfect.
"Have you not a drum to give him?" said Boivin, with a most malignant
sneer at my equipment.
"He'll make a noise in the world without that!" muttered the jailor,
half soliloquizing; and the words fell upon my heart with a strange
significance.
"Your blessing, Boivin," said I, "and we part."
"_Te te--_"
"No, no; don't curse the boy," interposed the jailor, good humoredly.
"Then, move off, youngster; I've lost too much time with you already."
The next moment I was in the "Place"--a light, misty rain was falling,
and the night was dark and starless; the "_Scélérat_" was brilliant with
lamps and candles, and crowds were passing in and out, but it was no
longer a home for me--so I passed on, and continued my way toward the
Boulevard.
CHAPTER IV.
"THE NIGHT OF THE NINTH THERMIDOR."
I had agreed with the Père Michel to rendezvous at the garden of the
little chapel of St. Blois, and thitherward I now turned my steps.
The success which followed this my first enterprise in life had already
worked a wondrous change in all my feelings. Instead of looking up to
the poor Curé for advice and guidance, I felt as though our parts were
exchanged, and that it was _I_ who was now the protector of the other.
The oft-repeated sneers at "les bons Prêtres," who were good for
nothing, must have had a share in this new estimate of my friend; but a
certain self-reliance just then springing up in my heart, effectually
completed the change.
The period was essentially one of action and not of reflection. Events
seemed to fashion themselves at the will of him who had daring and
courage to confront them, and they alone appeared weak and poor-spirited
who would not stem the tide of fortune. Sentiments like these were not,
as may be supposed, best calculated to elevate the worthy Père in my
esteem, and I already began to feel how unsuited was such companionship
for me, whose secret promptings whispered ever, "go forward."
The very vagueness of my hopes served but to extend the horizon of
futurity before me, and I fancied a thousand situations of distinction
that might yet be mine. Fame--or its poor counterfeit, notoriety--seemed
the most enviable of all possessions. It mattered little by what merits
it were won, for, in that fickle mood of popular opinion, great vices
were as highly prized as transcendent abilities, and one might be as
illustrious by crime as by genius. Such were not the teachings of the
Père; but they were the lessons that Paris dinned into my ears
unceasingly. Reputation, character, was of no avail, in a social
condition where all was change and vacillation. What was idolized one
day, was execrated the next. The hero of yesterday, was the object of
popular vengeance to-day. The success of the passing hour was every
thing.
The streets were crowded as I passed along; although a drizzling rain
was falling, groups and knots of people were gathered together at every
corner, and, by their eager looks and gestures, showed that some event
of great moment had occurred. I stopped to ask what it meant, and
learned that Robespierre had been denounced in the Assembly, and that
his followers were hastening, in arms, to the Place de Grêve. As yet,
men spoke in whispers, or broken phrases. Many were seen affectionately
embracing and clasping each other's hands in passionate emotion, but few
dared to trust themselves to words, for none knew if the peril were
really passed, or if the power of the tyrant might not become greater
than ever. While I yet listened to the tidings which, in half sentences
and broken words, reached my ears, the roll of drums, beating the
"générale," was heard, and suddenly the head of a column appeared,
carrying torches, and seated upon ammunition-wagons and caissons, and
chanting in wild chorus the words of the "Marseillaise." On they came, a
terrible host of half-naked wretches, their heads bound in
handkerchiefs, and their brawny arms bare to the shoulders.
The artillery of the Municipale followed, many of the magistrates riding
among them dressed in the tricolored scarfs of officers. As the
procession advanced, the crowds receded, and gradually the streets were
left free to the armed force.
While, terror-struck, I continued to gaze at the countenances over which
the lurid torchlight cast a horrid glare, a strong hand grasped my
collar, and by a jerk swung me up to a seat on one of the caissons; and
at the same time a deep voice said, "Come, youngster, this is more in
thy way than mine," and a black-bearded "sapeur" pushed a drum before
me, and ordered me to beat the générale. Such was the din and uproar
that my performance did not belie my uniform, and I beat away manfully,
scarcely sorry, amid all my fears, at the elevated position from which
I now surveyed the exciting scene around me.
As we passed, the shops were closed on either side in haste, and across
the windows of the upper stories beds and mattresses were speedily
drawn, in preparation for the state of siege now so imminent. Lights
flickered from room to room, and all betokened a degree of alarm and
terror. Louder and louder pealed the "Marseillaise," as the columns
deployed into the open Place, from which every street and lane now
poured its _tributaires_ of armed men. The line was now formed by the
artillery, which, to the number of sixteen pieces, ranged from end to
end of the square, the dense crowd of horse and foot forming behind, the
mass dimly lighted by the waving torches that here and there marked the
presence of an officer. Gradually the sounds of the "Marseillaise" grew
fainter and fainter, and soon a dreary silence pervaded that varied
host, more terrible now, as they stood speechless, than in all the
tumultuous din of the wildest uproar. Meanwhile, from the streets which
opened into the Place at the furthest end, the columns of the National
Guard began to move up, the leading files carrying torches; behind them
came ten pieces of artillery, which, as they issued, were speedily
placed in battery, and flanked by the heavy dragoons of the Guard; and
now, in breathless silence, the two forces stood regarding each other,
the cannoniers with lighted matches in their hands, the dragoons firmly
clasping their sabres--all but waiting for the word to plunge into the
deadliest strife. It was a terrible moment--the slightest stir in the
ranks--the rattling of a horse's panoply--the clank of a sabre--fell
upon the heart like the toll of a death-bell. It was then that two or
three horsemen were seen to advance from the troops of the Convention,
and approaching the others, were speedily lost among their ranks. A low
and indistinct murmur ran along the lines, which each moment grew
louder, till at last it burst forth into a cry of "Vive la Convention."
Quitting their ranks, the men gathered around a general of the National
Guard, who addressed them in words of passionate eloquence, but of which
I was too distant to hear any thing. Suddenly the ranks began to thin;
some were seen to pile their arms, and move away in silence; others
marched across the Place, and took up their position beside the troops
of the National Guard: of the cannoniers many threw down their matches,
and extinguished the flame with their feet, while others again,
limbering up their guns, slowly retired to the barracks.
As for myself, too much interested in the scene to remember that I was,
in some sort, an actor in it, I sat upon the caisson, watching all that
went forward so eagerly, that I never noticed the departure of my
companions, nor perceived that I was left by myself. I know not how much
later this discovery might have been deferred to me, had not an officer
of the "Guard" ridden up to where I was, and said "Move up, move up, my
lad; keep close to the battery." He pointed at the same time with his
sabre in the direction where a number of guns and carriages were already
proceeding.
Not a little flattered by the order, I gathered up reins and whip, and,
thanks to the good drilling of the beasts, who readily took their proper
places, soon found myself in the line, which now drew up in the rear of
the artillery of the Guard, separated from the front by a great mass of
horse and foot. I knew nothing of what went forward in the Place; from
what I gathered, however, I could learn that the artillery was in
position, the matches burning, and every thing in readiness for a
cannonade. Thus we remained for above an hour, when the order was given
to march. Little knew I that, in that brief interval, the whole fortunes
of France--ay, of humanity itself--had undergone a mighty change--that
the terrible reign of blood, the Tyranny of Robespierre had closed, and
that he who had sent so many to the scaffold, now lay bleeding and
mutilated upon the very table where he had signed the death-warrants.
The day was just beginning to dawn as we entered the barracks of the
Conciergerie, and drew up in a double line along its spacious square.
The men dismounted, and stood "at ease," awaiting the arrival of the
staff of the National Guard, which, it was said, was coming; and now the
thought occurred to me, of what I should best do, whether make my escape
while it was yet time, or remain to see by what accident I had come
there. If a sense of duty to the Père Michel urged me on one side, the
glimmering hope of some opening to fortune swayed me on the other. I
tried to persuade myself that my fate was bound up with his, and that he
should be my guide through the wild waste before me; but these
convictions could not stand against the very scene in which I stood. The
glorious panoply of war--the harnessed team--the helmeted dragoon--the
proud steed in all the trappings of battle! How faint were the pleadings
of duty against such arguments. The Père, too, designed me for a priest.
The life of a "seminarist" in a convent was to be mine! I was to wear
the red gown and the white cape of an "acolyte!"--to be taught how to
swing a censer, or snuff the candles of the high altar--to be a
train-bearer in a procession, or carry a relic in a glass-case! The
hoarse bray of a trumpet that then rung through the court routed these
ignoble fancies, and as the staff rode proudly in, my resolve was taken.
I was determined to be a soldier.
The day, I have said, was just breaking, and the officers wore their
dark gray capotes over their uniforms. One, however, had his coat partly
open, and I could see the blue and silver beneath, which, tarnished and
worn as it was, had to my eyes all the brilliancy of a splendid uniform.
He was an old man, and by his position in advance of the others, showed
that he was the chief of the staff. This was General Lacoste, at that
time "en mission" from the army of the Rhine, and now sent by the
Convention to report upon the state of events among the troops. Slowly
passing along the line, the old general halted before each gun,
pointing, out to his staff certain minutiæ, which, from his gestures and
manner, it was easy to see were not the subject of eulogy. Many of the
pieces were ill slung, and badly balanced on the trucks; the wheels, in
some cases, were carelessly put on, their tires worn, and the iron
shoeing defective. The harnessing, too, was patched and mended in a
slovenly fashion; the horses lean and out of condition; the drivers
awkward and inexperienced.
"This is all bad, gentlemen," said he, addressing the officers, but in a
tone to be easily heard all around him; "and reflects but little credit
upon the state of your discipline in the capital. We have been now
seventeen months in the field before the enemy, and not idle either; and
yet I would take shame to myself if the worst battery in our artillery
were not better equipped, better horsed, better driven, and better
served, than any I see here."
One, who seemed a superior officer, here appeared to interpose some
explanation or excuse, but the general would not listen to him, and
continued his way along the line, passing around which he now entered
the space between the guns and the caissons. At last he stopped directly
in front of where I was, and fixed his dark and penetrating eyes
steadily on me. Such was their fascination, that I could not look from
him, but continued to stare as fixedly at him.
"Look here, for instance," cried he, as he pointed to me with his sword,
"is that 'gamin' yonder like an artillery-driver? or is it to a
drummer-boy you intrust the caisson of an eight-pounder gun? Dismount,
sirrah, and come hither," cried he to me, in a voice that sounded like
an order for instant execution. "This popinjay dress of yours must have
been the fancy of some worthy shop-keeper of the 'Quai Lepelletier;' it
never could belong to any regular corps. Who are you?"
"Maurice Tiernay, sir," said I, bringing my hand to my cap in military
salute.
"Maurice Tiernay," repeated he, slowly, after me. "And have you no more
to say for yourself than your name?"
"Very little, sir," said I, taking courage from the difficulty in which
I found myself.
"What of your father, boy?--is he a soldier?"
"He was, sir," replied I, with firmness.
"Then he is dead? In what corps did he serve?"
"In the Garde du Corps," said I, proudly.
The old general gave a short cough, and seemed to search for his
snuff-box, to cover his confusion; the next moment, however, he had
regained his self-possession, and continued: "And since that event--I
mean, since you lost your father--what have you been doing? How have you
supported yourself?"
"In various ways, sir," said I, with a shrug of the shoulders, to imply
that the answer might be too tedious to listen to. "I have studied to be
a priest, and I have served as a 'rat' in the Prison du Temple."
"You have certainly tried the extremes of life," said he, laughing; "and
now you wish, probably, to hit the 'juste milieu,' by becoming a
soldier?"
"Even so, sir," said I, easily. "It was a mere accident that mounted me
upon this caisson; but I am quite ready to believe that fortune intended
me kindly when she did so."
"These 'gredins' fancy that they are all born to be generals of France,"
said the old man, laughing; "but, after all, it is a harmless delusion,
and easily curable by a campaign or two. Come, sirrah, I'll find out a
place for you, where, if you can not serve the republic better, you
will, at least, do her less injury, than as a driver in her artillery.
Bertholet, let him be enrolled in your detachment of the gendarme, and
give him my address: I wish to speak to him to-morrow."
"At what hour, general?" said I, promptly.
"At eight, or half-past--after breakfast," replied he.
"It may easily be before mine," muttered I to myself.
"What says he?" cried the general, sharply.
The aid-de-camp whispered a few words in answer, at which the other
smiled, and said, "Let him come somewhat earlier--say eight o'clock."
"You hear that, boy?" said the aid-de-camp to me, while, with a slight
gesture, he intimated that I might retire. Then, as if suddenly
remembering that he had not given me the address of the general, he took
a scrap of crumpled paper from his pocket-book, and wrote a few words
hastily on it with his pencil. "There," cried he, throwing it toward me,
"there is your billet for this day at least." I caught the scrap of
paper, and after deciphering the words, perceived that they were written
on the back of an "assignat" for forty sous.
It was a large sum to one who had not wherewithal to buy a morsel of
bread; and as I looked at it over and over, I fancied there would be no
end to the pleasures such wealth could purchase. I can breakfast on the
Quai Voltaire, thought I, ay, and sumptuously too, with coffee, and
chestnuts, and a slice of melon, and another of cheese, and a "petite
goutte" to finish, for five sous. The panther, at the corner of the Pont
Neuf, costs but a sou; and for three one can see the brown bear of
America, the hyena, and another beast whose name I forget, but whose
image, as he is represented outside, carrying off a man in his teeth, I
shall retain to my last hour. Then, there is the panorama of Dunkirk, at
the Rue Chopart, with the Duke of York begging his life from a
terrible-looking soldier in a red cap and a tri-colored scarf. After
that, there's the parade at the "Carousel," and mayhaps something more
solemn still at the "Grève;" but there was no limit to the throng of
enjoyments which came rushing to my imagination, and it was in a kind of
ecstasy of delight I set forth on my voyage of pleasure.
CHAPTER V.
THE CHOICE OF A LIFE.
In looking back, after a long lapse of years, I can not refrain from a
feeling of astonishment, to think how little remembrance I possess of
the occurrences of that day--one of the most memorable that ever dawned
for France--the eventful 29th of July, that closed the reign of terror
by the death of the tyrant! It is true that all Paris was astir at
daybreak; that a sense of national vengeance seemed to pervade the vast
masses that filled the streets, which now were scenes of the most
exciting emotion. I can only account for the strange indifference that I
felt about these stirring themes, by the frequency with which similar,
or what, to me, at least, appeared similar scenes had already passed
before my eyes.
One of the most remarkable phases of the revolution was, the change it
produced in all the social relations, by substituting an assumed
nationality for the closer and dearer ties of kindred and affection.
France was every thing--the family nothing; every generous wish, every
proud thought, every high ambition or noble endeavor belonged to the
country. In this way, whatever patriotism may have gained, certainly all
the home affections were utterly wrecked; the humble and unobtrusive
virtues of domestic life seemed mean and insignificant beside the grand
displays of patriotic devotion which each day exhibited.
Hence grew the taste for that "life of the streets," then so popular;
every thing should be "en évidence." All the emotions which delicacy
would render sacred to the seclusion of home, were now to be paraded to
the noonday. Fathers were reconciled to rebellious children before the
eyes of multitudes; wives received forgiveness from their husbands in
the midst of approving crowds; leave-takings, the most affecting,
partings, for those never to meet again, the last utterings of the
death-bed, the faint whispers of expiring affection, the imprecations of
undying hate, all, all were exhibited in public, and the gaze of the
low, the vulgar, and the debauched, associated with the most agonizing
griefs that ever the heart endured. The scenes, which now are shrouded
in all the secrecy of domestic privacy, were then the daily life of
Paris; and to this cause alone can I attribute the hardened indifference
with which events the most terrible and heart-rending were witnessed.
Bred up amidst such examples, I saw little matter for emotion in scenes
of harrowing interest. An air of mockery was on every thing, and a
bastard classicality destroyed every semblance of truth in whatever
would have been touching and affecting.
The commotion of Paris on that memorable morning was, then, to my
thinking, little more than usual. If the crowds who pressed their way to
"The Place de la Révolution" were greater; if the cries of vengeance
were in louder utterance; if the imprecations were deeper and more
terrible, the ready answer, that satisfied all curiosity, was--it was
Robespierre, who was on his way to be executed. Little knew I what hung
upon that life! and now the fate of millions depended upon the blood
that morning was to shed. Too full of myself and my own projects, I
disengaged myself from the crowds that pressed eagerly toward the
Tuileries, and took my way by less frequented streets in the direction
of the Boulevard Mont Parnasse.
I wished, if possible, to see the Père once more, to take a last
farewell of him, and ask his blessing, too; for still a lingering faith
in the lessons he had taught me, continued to haunt my mind, amidst all
the evil influences with which my wayward life surrounded me. The
further I went from the quarter of the Tuileries, the more deserted and
solitary grew the streets. Not a carriage or horseman was to be seen;
scarcely a foot-passenger. All Paris had, apparently, assembled on the
"Place de la Révolution;" and the very beggars had quitted their
accustomed haunts to repair thither. Even the distant hum of the vast
multitude faded away, and it was only as the wind bore them, that I
could catch the sounds of the hoarse cries that bespoke a people's
vengeance; and now I found myself in the little silent street which once
had been my home. I stood opposite the house where we used to live,
afraid to enter it, lest I might compromise the safety of her I wished
to save, and yet longing once more to see the little chamber where we
once sat together--the chimney-corner where, in the dark nights of
winter, I nestled, with my hymn-book, and tried to learn the rhymes that
every plash of the falling hail against the windows routed; to lie down
once more in the little bed, where so often I had passed whole nights of
happy imaginings--bright thoughts of a peaceful future, that were never
to be realized!
Half-choking with my emotion, I passed on, and soon saw the green
fields, and the windmill-covered hill of Montmartre, rising above the
embankment of the Boulevards; and now the ivy-clothed wall of the
garden, within which stood the chapel of St. Blois. The gate lay ajar,
as of old, and pushing it open, I entered. Every thing was exactly as I
had left it--the same desolation and desertion every where--so much so,
that I almost fancied no human foot had crossed its dreary precincts
since last I was there. On drawing nigh to the chapel, I found the door
fast barred and barricaded, as before; but a window lay open, and on
examining it closer, I discovered the marks of a recent foot-track on
the ground and the window-sill. Could the Père Michel have been there?
was the question that at once occurred to my mind. Had the poor priest
come to take a last look and a farewell of a spot so dear to him? It
could scarcely have been any other. There was nothing to tempt cupidity
in that humble little church; an image of the "Virgin and Child" in wax
was the only ornament of the altar. No, no; pillage had never been the
motive of him who entered here.
Thus reasoning, I climbed up to the window, and entered the chapel. As
my footsteps echoed through the silent building, I felt that sense of
awe and reverence so inseparably connected with a place of worship, and
which is ever more impressive still, as we stand in it alone. The
present, however, was less before me than the past, of which every thing
reminded me. There was the seat the marquise used to sit in; there the
footstool I had so often placed at her feet. How different was the last
service I had rendered her! There the pillar, beside which I have stood
spell-bound, gazing at that fair face, whose beauty arrested the
thoughts that should have wended heavenward, and made my muttered
prayers like offerings to herself. The very bouquet of flowers--some
peri's hand had placed beneath the shrine--withered and faded, was there
still. But where were they whose beating hearts had throbbed with deep
devotion? How many had died upon the scaffold!--how many were still
lingering in imprisonment, some in exile, some in concealment, dragging
out lives of misery and anxiety. What was the sustaining spirit of such
martyrdom? I asked myself again and again. Was it the zeal of true
religion, or was it the energy of loyalty, that bore them up against
every danger, and enabled them to brave death itself with firmness?--and
if this faith of theirs was thus ennobling, why could not France be of
one mind and heart? There came no answer to these doubts of mine, and I
slowly advanced toward the altar, still deeply buried in thought. What
was my surprise to see that two candles stood there, which bore signs of
having been recently lighted. At once the whole truth flashed across
me--the Père had been there; he had come to celebrate a mass--the last,
perhaps, he was ever to offer up at that altar. I knew with what warm
affection he loved every object and every spot endeared to him by long
time, and I fancied to myself the overflowing of his heart, as he
entered once more, and for the last time, the little temple, associated
with all the joys and sorrows of his existence. Doubtless, too, he had
waited anxiously for my coming; mayhap, in the prayers he offered, I was
not forgotten. I thought of him kneeling there, in the silence of the
night, alone, as he was, his gentle voice the only sound in the
stillness of the hour; his pure heart throbbing with gratitude for his
deliverance, and prayerful hopes for those who had been his persecutors.
I thought over all this, and, in a torrent of emotions, I knelt down
before the altar to pray. I know not what words I uttered, but his name
must some how have escaped my lips; for suddenly a door opened beside
the altar, and the Père Michel, dressed in his full vestments, stood
before me. His features, wan and wasted as they were, had regained their
wonted expression of calm dignity; and by his look I saw that he would
not suffer the sacred spot to be profaned by any outburst of feeling on
either side.
"Those dreadful shouts tell of another massacre," said he, solemnly, as
the wind bore toward us the deafening cries of the angry multitude. "Let
us pray for the souls' rest of the departed."
"Then will your prayers be offered for Robespierre, for Couthon, and St.
Just," said I, boldly.
"And who are they who need more the saints' intercession--who have ever
been called to judgment with such crimes to expiate--who have ever so
widowed France, and so desecrated her altars? Happily a few yet remain
where piety may kneel to implore pardon for their iniquity. Let us
recite the Litany for the Dead," said he, solemnly, and at once began
the impressive service.
As I knelt beside the rails of the altar, and heard the prayers which,
with deep devotion, he uttered. I could not help feeling the contrast
between that touching evidence of Christian charity, and the tumultuous
joy of the populace, whose frantic bursts of triumph were borne on the
air.
"And now come with me, Maurice," said he, as the mass was concluded.
"Here, in this little sacristy, we are safe from all molestation; none
will think of us on such a day as this."
And as he spoke, he drew his arm around me, and led me into the little
chamber where once the precious vessels and the decorations of the
church were kept.
"Here we are safe," said he, as he drew me to his side on the oaken
bench, which formed all the furniture of the room. "To-morrow, Maurice,
we must leave this, and seek an asylum in another land; but we are not
friendless, my child--the brothers of the 'Sacred Heart' will receive
us. Their convent is in the wilds of the Ardennes, beyond the frontiers
of France, and there, beloved by the faithful peasantry, they live in
security and peace. We need not take the vows of their order, which is
one of the strictest of all religious houses; but we may claim their
hospitality and protection, and neither will be denied us. Think what a
blessed existence will that be, Maurice, my son, to dwell under the same
roof with these holy men, and to imbibe from them the peace of mind that
holiness alone bestows; to awake at the solemn notes of the pealing
organ, and to sink to rest with the solemn liturgies still chanting
around you; to feel an atmosphere of devotion on every side, and to see
the sacred relics whose miracles have attested the true faith in ages
long past. Does it not stir thy heart, my child, to know that such
blessed privileges may be thine?"
I hung my head in silence, for in truth, I felt nothing of the
enthusiasm with which he sought to inspire me. The Père quickly saw
what passed in my mind, and endeavored to depict the life of the
monastery as a delicious existence, embellished by all the graces of
literature, and adorned by the pleasures of intellectual converse.
Poetry, romance, scenery, all were pressed into the service of his
persuasions; but how weak were such arguments to one like me, the boy
whose only education had been what the streets of Paris afforded--whose
notions of eloquence were formed on the insane ravings of "The
Mountain," and whose idea of greatness were centred in mere notoriety.
My dreamy look of inattention showed him again that he had failed; and I
could see in the increased pallor of his face, the quivering motion of
his lip, the agitation the defeat was costing him.
"Alas! alas!" cried he, passionately, "the work of ruin is perfect; the
mind of youth is corrupted, and the fountain of virtue defiled at the
very source. Oh! Maurice, I had never thought this possible of thee, the
child of my heart!"
A burst of grief here overcame him; for some minutes he could not speak.
At last he arose from his seat, and wiping off the tears that covered
his cheeks, with his robe, spoke, but in a voice whose full round tones
contrasted strongly with his former weak accents.
"The life I have pictured seems to thee ignoble and unworthy, boy. So
did it not appear to Chrysostom, to Origen, and to Augustin, to the
blessed saints of our church, the eldest born of Christianity. Be it so.
Thine, mayhap is not the age, nor this the era in which to hope for
better things. Thy heart yearns for heroic actions--thy spirit is set
upon high ambitions--be it so. I say, never was the time more fitting
for thee. The enemy is up; his armies are in the field; thousands and
tens of thousands swell the ranks, already flushed with victory. Be a
soldier, then. Ay, Maurice, buckle on the sword--the battle-field is
before thee. Thou hast made choice to seek the enemy in the far-away
countries of heathen darkness, or here in our own native France, where
his camp is already spread. If danger be the lure that tempts thee--if
to confront peril be thy wish--there is enough of it. Be a soldier,
then, and gird thee for the great battle that is at hand. Ay! boy, if
thou feelest within thee the proud darings that foreshadow success,
speak the word, and thou shalt be a standard-bearer in the very van."
I waited not for more; but springing up, I clasped my arms around his
neck, and cried, in ecstasy, "Yes! Père Michel, you have guessed aright;
my heart's ambition is to be a soldier and I want but your blessing to
be a brave one."
"And thou shalt have it. A thousand blessings follow those who go forth
to the good fight. But thou art yet young, Maurice--too young for this.
Thou needest time and much teaching, too. He who would brave the enemy
before us, must be skillful as well as courageous. Thou art as yet but a
child."
"The general said he liked boy-soldiers," said I, promptly; "he told me
so himself."
"What general--who told thee?" cried the Père in trembling eagerness.
"General Lacoste, the Chef-d'-Etat, major of the army of the Rhine; the
same who gave me a rendezvous for to-morrow at his quarters."
It was not till I had repeated my explanation again and again, nor,
indeed, until I had recounted all the circumstances of my last night's
adventure, that the poor Père could be brought to see his way through a
mystery that had almost become equally embarrassing to myself. When he
did, however, detect the clew, and when he had perceived the different
tracks on which our minds were traveling, his grief burst all bounds. He
inveighed against the armies of the Republic as hordes of pillagers and
bandits, the sworn enemies of the church, the desecrators of her altars.
Their patriotism he called a mere pretense to shroud their infidelity.
Their heroism was the bloodthirstiness of democratic cruelty. Seeing me
still unmoved by all this passionate declamation, he adopted another
tactic, and suddenly asked me if it were for such a cause as this my
father had been a soldier?
"No!" replied I, firmly; "for when my father was alive, the soil of
France had not been desecrated by the foot of the invader. The Austrian,
the Prussian, the Englishman had not yet dared to dictate the laws under
which we were to live."
He appeared thunderstruck at my reply, repealing, as it seemed to him,
the extent of those teachings, whose corruptions he trembled at.
"I knew it, I knew it," cried he, bitterly, as he wrung his hands. "The
seed of the iniquity is sown--the harvest-time will not be long in
coming! And so, boy, thou hast spoken with one of these men--these
generals, as they call themselves, of that republican horde?"
"The officer who commands the artillery of the army of the Rhine may
write himself general with little presumption," said I, almost angrily.
"They who once led our armies to battle were the nobles of France--men
whose proud station was the pledge for their chivalrous devotion. But
why do I discuss the question with thee? He who deserts his faith may
well forget that his birth was noble. Go, boy, join those with whom your
heart is already linked. Your lesson will be an easy one--you have
nothing to unlearn. The songs of the Girondins are already more grateful
to your ear than our sacred canticles. Go, I say, since between us,
henceforth, there can be no companionship.
"Will you not bless me, Père," said I, approaching him in deep humility;
"will you not let me carry with me thy benediction?"
"How shall I bless the arm that is lifted to wound the Holy Church? how
shall I pray for one whose place is in the ranks of the infidel? Hadst
thou faith in my blessing, boy, thou hadst never implored it in such a
cause. Renounce thy treason--and not alone my blessing, but thou shalt
have a 'Novena' to celebrate thy fidelity. Be of us, Maurice, and thy
name shall be honored, where honor is immortality."
The look of beaming affection with which he uttered this, more than the
words themselves, now shook my courage, and, in a conflict of doubt and
indecision, I held down my head without speaking. What might have been
my ultimate resolve, if left completely to myself, I know not; but at
that very moment a detachment of soldiers marched past in the street
without. They were setting off to join the army of the Rhine, and were
singing in joyous chorus the celebrated song of the day, "Le chant du
depart." The tramp of their feet--the clank of their weapons--their
mellow voices--but, more than all, the associations that thronged to my
mind, routed every other thought, and I darted from the spot, and never
stopped till I reached the street.
A great crowd followed the detachment, composed partly of friends of the
soldiers, partly of the idle loungers of the capital. Mixing with these,
I moved onward, and speedily passed the outer boulevard, and gained the
open country.
(_To be continued._)
[From Household Words.]
THE PLANET-WATCHERS OF GREENWICH.
There is a morsel of Greenwich Park, which has, for now nearly two
centuries, been held sacred from intrusion. It is the portion inclosed
by the walls of the Observatory. Certainly a hundred thousand visitors
must ramble over the surrounding lawns, and look with curious eye upon
the towers and outer boundaries of that little citadel of science, for
one who finds admission to the interior of the building. Its brick
towers, with flanking turrets and picturesque roofs, perched on the side
of the gravelly hill, and sheltered round about by groups of fine old
trees, are as well known as Greenwich Hospital itself. But what work
goes on inside its carefully preserved boundary, and under those
movable, black-domed roofs, is a popular mystery. Many a holiday-maker's
wonder has been excited by the fall, at one o'clock, of the huge, black
ball, high up there, by the weather vane on the topmost point of the
eastern turret. He knows, or is told if he asks a loitering pensioner,
that the descent of the ball tells the time as truly as the sun; and
that all the ships in the river watch it to set their chronometers by,
before they sail; and, that, all the railway clocks, and all the railway
trains over the kingdom are arranged punctually by its indications. But
how the heavens are watched to secure this punctual definition of the
flight of time, and what other curious labors are going on inside the
Observatory, is a sealed book. The public have always been, of
necessity, excluded from the Observatory walls, for the place is devoted
to the prosecution of a science whose operations are inconsistent with
the bustle, the interruptions, the talk, and the anxieties of popular
curiosity and examination.
But when public information and instruction are the objects, the doors
are widely opened, and the press and its _attachés_ find a way into
this, as into many other sacred and forbidden spots. Only last week one
of "our own contributors" was seen in a carriage on the Greenwich
railway, poring over the paper in the last Edinburgh Review that
describes our national astronomical establishment, and was known
afterward to have climbed the Observatory hill, and to have rung and
gained admission at the little, black, mysterious gate in the
Observatory wall. Let us see what is told in his report of what he saw
within that sacred portal.
In the park on a fine day all seems life and gayety--once within the
Observatory boundary, the first feeling is that of isolation. There is a
curious stillness about the place, and the foot-step of the old
pensioner, who closes the gate upon a visitor, echoes again on the
pavement as he goes away to wake up from his astronomical or
meteorological trance one of the officers of this sanctum. Soon, under
the guidance of the good genius so invoked, the secrets of the place
begin to reveal themselves.
The part of the Observatory so conspicuous from without is the portion
least used within. When it was designed by Christopher Wren, the general
belief was that such buildings should be lofty, that the observer might
be raised toward the heavenly bodies whose motions he was to watch. More
modern science has taught its disciples better; and in Greenwich--which
is an eminently practical Observatory--the working part of the building
is found crouching behind the loftier towers. These are now occupied as
subsidiary to the modern practical building. The ground floor is used as
a residence by the chief astronomer; above is the large hall originally
built to contain huge moveable telescopes and quadrants--such as are not
now employed. Nowadays, this hall occasionally becomes a sort of
scientific counting-house--irreverent but descriptive term--in which,
from time to time, a band of scientific clerks are congregated to post
up the books, in which the daily business of the planets has been jotted
down by the astronomers who watch those marvelous bodies. Another
portion is a kind of museum of astronomical curiosities. Flamstead and
Halley, and their immediate successors, worked in these towers, and here
still rest some of the old, rude tools with which their discoveries were
completed, and their reputation, and the reputation of Greenwich, were
established. As time has gone on, astronomers and opticians have
invented new, and more perfect, and more luxurious instruments. Greater
accuracy is thus obtainable, at a less expenditure of human patience and
labor; and so the old tools are cast aside. One of them belonged to
Halley, and was put up by him a hundred and thirty years ago; another
is an old brazen quadrant, with which many valuable observations were
made in by-gone times; and another, an old iron quadrant, still fixed in
the stone pier to which it was first attached. Some of the huge
telescopes that once found place in this old Observatory, have been sent
away. One went to the Cape of Good Hope, and has been useful there.
Another of the unsatisfactory, and now unused instruments, had a tube
twenty-five feet long, whose cool and dark interior was so pleasant to
the spiders that, do what they would, the astronomers could not
altogether banish the persevering insects from it. Spin they would; and,
spite of dusting and cleaning, and spider-killing, spin they did; and,
at length, the savans got more instruments and less patience, and the
spiders were left in quiet possession. This has been pleasantly spoken
of as an instance of poetical justice. It is but fair that spiders
should, at times, have the best of astronomers, for astronomers rob
spiders for the completion of their choicest instruments. No fabric of
human construction is fine enough to strain across the eyepiece of an
important telescope, and opticians preserve a particular race of
spiders, that their webs may be taken for that purpose. The spider lines
are strained across the best instruments at Greenwich and elsewhere; and
when the spinners of these beautifully fine threads disturbed the
accuracy of the tube in the western wing of the old Observatory, it was
said to be but fair retaliation for the robberies the industrious
insects had endured.
A narrow stair leads from the unused rooms of the old Observatory to its
leaded roof, whence a magnificent view is obtained; the park, the
hospital, the town of Greenwich, and the windings of the Thames, and,
gazing further, London itself comes grandly into the prospect. The most
inveterate astronomer could scarcely fail to turn for a moment from the
wonders of the heavens to admire these glories of the earth. From the
leads, two turrets are reached, where the first constantly active
operations in this portion of the building, are in progress.
At the present time, indeed, these turrets are the most useful portions
of the old building. In one is placed the well-known contrivance for
registering, hour after hour, and day after day, the force and direction
of the wind. To keep such a watch by human vigilance, and to make such a
register by human labor, would be a tedious, expensive, and irksome
task; and human ingenuity taxed itself to make a machine for perfecting
such work. The wind turns a weather-cock, and, by aid of cog-wheels the
motion is transferred to a lead pencil fixed over a sheet of paper, and
thus the wind is made to write down the direction which itself is
blowing. Not far distant is a piece of metal, the flat side of which is
ever turned by the weather-cock to meet the full force of the wind,
which, blowing upon it, drives it back against a spring. To this spring
is affixed a chain passing over, pullies toward another pencil, fixed
above a sheet of paper, and moving faithfully, more or less, as the
wind blows harder or softer. And thus the "gentle zephyr" and the fresh
breeze, and the heavy gale, and, when it comes, the furious hurricane,
are made to note down their character and force. The sheet of paper on
which the uncertain element, the wind, is bearing witness against
itself, is fixed upon a frame moved by clock-work. Steady as the
progress of time, this ingenious mechanism draws the paper under the
suspended pencils. Thus each minute and each hour has its written
record, without human help or inspection. Once a day only, an assistant
comes to put a new blank sheet in the place of that which has been
covered by the moving pencils, and the latter is taken away to be bound
up in a volume. The book might with truth be lettered, "The History of
the Wind; written by Itself"--an Æolian autobiography.
Close by is another contrivance for registering in decimals of an inch
the quantity of rain that falls. The drops are caught, and passing down
a tube, a permanent mark is made by which the quantity is determined.
The eastern turret is devoted to the Time Ball and its mechanism. Far
out at sea--away from all sources of information but those to be asked
of the planets, his compass, his quadrant, his chronometer, and his
almanack, the mariner feels the value of _time_ in a way which the
landsman can scarcely conceive. If his chronometer is right, he may feel
safe; let him have reason to doubt its accuracy, and he knows how the
perils surrounding him are increased. An error of a few seconds in his
time may place him in danger--an error of a few minutes may lead him to
steer blindly to his certain wreck. Hence his desire when he is leaving
port to have his time-pieces right to a second; and hence the
expenditure of thought, and labor, and money, at the Greenwich
Observatory, to afford the shipping of the great port of London, and the
English navy, the exact time--true to the tenth of a second, or six
hundredth of a minute--and to afford them also a book, the Nautical
Almanack, containing a mass of astronomical facts, on which they may
base their calculations, with full reliance as to their accuracy. Every
day for the last seventeen years, at five minutes before one o'clock,
the black ball five feet across and stuffed with cork, is raised halfway
up its shaft above the eastern turret of the observatory--at
two-and-a-half minutes before that hour, it rises to the top. Telescopes
from many a point, both up and down the river, are now pointed to this
dark spot above the Greenwich trees, and many an anxious mariner has his
time-pieces beside him, that their indications may be made true. Watch
the ball as you stand in the Park. It is now just raised. You must wait
two minutes and a half, and as you do so, you feel what a minute may be.
It seems a long, palpable, appreciable time, indeed. In the turret
below, stands a clock telling the true time, gained by a laborious
watching of the _clock-stars_; and beside the clock, is a man with a
practiced hand upon a trigger, and a practiced eye upon the face of the
dial. One minute--two minutes pass. Thirty seconds more, and the trigger
has released the Ball. As it leaves the top of the shaft, it is one
o'clock to the tenth of a second By the time it has reached the bottom
it is some five seconds later.
Leaving the Ball Turret, and the old building which it surmounts, the
new Observatory, where the chief work of the establishment is done,
claims our notice. This attention would scarcely be given to its outward
appearance for it is a long, low building, scarcely seen beyond its own
boundaries. The Greenwich Observatory is not a _show_ place, but an
eminently practical establishment. St. Petersburg and other cities have
much more gorgeous buildings devoted to astronomical purposes, and
Russia and other countries spend much more money on astronomy than
England does, yet the Greenwich Tables have a world-wide reputation, and
some of them are used as the groundwork for calculations in all
Observatories at home and abroad. The astronomer does not want marble
halls or grand saloons for his work. Galileo used a bell-tower at
Venice, and Kepler stood on the bridge at Prague to watch the stars. The
men, not the buildings, do the work. No disappointment, need be felt,
then, to find the modern Observatory a range of unadorned buildings
running east and west, with slits in the roof and in some of the walls.
Within these simple buildings are the instruments now used, displaying
almost the perfection of mechanical skill in their construction and
finish--beautifully adapted to the object they have to fulfill, and in
perfect order. They are fixed on solid piers of masonry, deeply imbedded
in the earth, to secure freedom from vibration--a quality better
obtained when the foundations are on sand or gravel than when on rock.
To describe the instruments by their technical names, and to go into any
particulars of the instruments they have superseded, would take space,
only to do the work of a scientific treatise. Enough, therefore, to say,
that there are the telescopes best adapted to the chief duty of the
place, which is, watching the moon whenever she is visible; watching the
_clock-stars_, by which the true time is calculated more exactly than it
could be from observations of the sun alone; and watching other
planetary bodies as they pass the meridian. Eclipses, occultations, and
other phenomena, of course, have their share of attention, and add to
the burden of the observer's duties.
The staff of the Observatory includes a chief astronomer, Mr. Airy, with
a salary of £800 a year; and six assistants who are paid, £470, £290,
£240, £150, £130, and £130, respectively. This does not include the
officers of the Meteorological branch of the establishment, to be spoken
of hereafter; and which consists of Mr. Glaisher, with £240 a year, one
assistant at £120, and two additional computers. At times, when these
scientific laborers have collected more observations than they are able
to work out; additional help is summoned, in shape of the body of
scientific clerks before spoken of; who, seated at desks, cast up the
accounts the planetary bodies, including such regular old friends as the
moon and fixed stars, but not forgetting those wandering celestial
existences that rush, from time to time, over the meridian, and may be
fairly called the chance customers of the astronomer.
Though the interior of the Observatory seems so still, the life of those
employed there has its excitements. Looking through telescopes forms a
small part only of their duty--and that duty can not be done when the
weather is unfavorable. On cloudy days the observer is idle; in bright
weather he is busy; and a long continuance of clear days and nights
gives him more employment than he can well complete. Summer, therefore,
is his time of labor; winter his time of rest. It appears that in our
climate the nights, on the whole, are clearer than the days, and
evenings less cloudy than mornings. Every assistant takes his turn as an
observer, and a chain of duty is kept up night and day; at other
periods, the busiest portion of the twenty-four hours at the
Observatory, is between nine in the morning and two in the afternoon.
During this time they work in silence, the task being to complete the
records of the observations made, by filling in the requisite columns of
figures upon printed forms, and then adding and subtracting them as the
case requires. While thus engaged, the assistant who has charge of an
instrument looks, from time to time, at his star regulated clock, and
when it warns him that his expected planet is nearly due, he leaves his
companions, and quietly repairs to the room where the telescope is
ready. The adjustment of this has previously been arranged with the
greatest nicety. The shutter is moved from the slit in the roof, the
astronomer sits upon an easy chair with a movable back. If the object he
seeks is high in the heavens, this chair-back is lowered till its
occupant almost lies down; if the star is lower, the chair-back is
raised in proportion. He has his note-book and metallic pencil in hand.
Across the eye-piece of the telescope are stretched seven lines of
spider-web, dividing the field of view. If his seat requires change, the
least motion arranges it to his satisfaction, for it rests upon a
railway of its own. Beside him is one of the star-clocks, and as the
moment approaches for the appearance of the planet, the excitement of
the moment increases. "The tremble of impatience for the entrance of the
star on the field of view," says an Edinburgh Reviewer, "is like that of
a sportsman whose dog has just made a full point, and who awaits the
rising of the game. When a star appears, the observer, in technical
language, _takes a second from the clock face_; that is, he reads the
second with his eye, and counts on by the ear the succeeding beats of
the clock, naming the seconds mentally. As the star passes each wire of
the transit, he marks down in his jotting-book with a metallic pencil
the second, _and the second only_, of his observation, with such a
fraction of a second as corresponds, in his judgment, to the interval of
time between the passage of the star, and the beat of the clock which
preceded such passage."
An experienced observer will never commit an error in this mental
calculation, exceeding the tenth of a second, or six hundredth of a
minute. When the star has been thus watched over the seven cobweb lines
(or wires), the observer jots down the hour and minute, in addition to
the second, and the task is done. Stars, not very near the sun, may be
seen in broad daylight, but, at night, it is requisite to direct a ray
of light from a lamp, so far to enlighten the field of the telescope, as
to permit the spider lines to be seen running across the brighter ground
on which the expected star is to be visible.
The adjustment of the instruments is a task of great nicety. If they are
out of trim only a shadow of a shade of a hair's-breadth, the desired
accuracy is interfered with, and they have to be re-adjusted.
Temperature is of course an important element in their condition, and a
slight sensibility may do mischief. The warmth of the observer's body,
when approaching the instruments, has been known to affect their
accuracy; and to avoid such sources of error, instruments have at times
been cased in flannel, that the non-conducting powers of that homely
fabric might screen the too-sensitive metal.
Sunday is a comparative holiday at the Observatory, for then, except
when any extraordinary phenomena are expected, the only duty done is to
drop the Time Ball, and observe the moon's place. The moon is never
neglected, and her motions have been here watched, during the last
hundred and seventy years, with the most pertinacious care--to the great
service of astronomy, and the great benefit of navigation.
The library should not pass unnoticed. It is small; but being devoted to
works upon astronomy, and the kindred sciences, there is ample room for
all that has hitherto been written on the subject, or that can, for many
generations, be produced. The observations of a lifetime spent in
watching the stars may be printed in marvelously few pages. A glance
through the Greenwich Astronomical Library gives a rough general idea of
what the world has done and is doing for the promotion of this science.
Russia contributes large, imperial-looking tomes, that tell of extended
observations made under the munificent patronage of a despot; Germany
sends from different points a variety of smaller, cheaper-looking, yet
valuable contributions; France gives proofs of her genius and her
discoveries; but _her_ forte is not in observation. The French are bad
observers. They have no such proofs of unremitting, patient toil in
search of facts, as those afforded in the records of the Greenwich
Tables of the Moon. Indeed, Greenwich, as we have already said, is a
working Observatory; and those who go into its library, and its
fire-proof manuscript-room, and see how its volumes of observations have
been growing from the small beginnings of the days of Flamstead and
Halley, to those of our later and more, liberal times, will have good
reason to acknowledge that the money devoted to this establishment has
been well employed.
One other spot must be noticed as among the notable things in this
astronomical sanctum. It is the Chronometer-room, to which, during the
first three Mondays in the year, the chief watch-makers of London send
in their choicest instruments for examination and trial. The watches
remain for a good portion of a year; their rates being noted, day by
day, by two persons; and then the makers of the best receive prizes, and
their instruments are purchased for the navy. Other competitors obtain
certificates of excellence, which bring customers from the merchant
service; while others pass unrewarded. To enter the room where these
admirable instruments are kept, suggests the idea of going into a
Brobdingnag watch-factory. Round the place are ranged shelves, on which
the large watches are placed, all ticking in the most distinct and
formidable way one against another. When they first arrive, in January,
they are left to the ordinary atmospheric temperature for some months.
Their rates being taken under these circumstances, a large stove in the
center of the apartment is lighted, and heat got up to a sort of
artificial East India or Gold Coast point. Tried under these influences,
they are placed in an iron tray over the stove, like so many watch-pies
in a baker's dish, and the fire being encouraged, they are literally
kept baking, to see how their metal will stand that style of treatment.
While thus hot, their rates are once more taken; and then, after this
fiery ordeal, such of them as their owners like to trust to an opposite
test, are put into freezing mixtures! Yet, so beautifully made are these
triumphs of human ingenuity--so well is their mechanism 'corrected' for
compensating the expansion caused by the heat, and the contraction
induced by the cold--that an even rate of going is established, so
nearly, that its variation under opposite circumstances becomes a matter
of close and certain estimate.
The rates of chronometers on trial for purchase by the Board of
Admirality, at the Observatory, are posted up and printed in an official
form. Upon looking to the document for last year, we find a statement of
their performances during six months of 1849, with memoranda of the
exact weeks during which the chronometers were exposed to the open air
at a north window; the weeks the Chronometer-room was heated by a stove,
the chronometers being dispersed on the surrounding shelves; and the
weeks during which they were placed in the tray above the stove. The
rate given during the first week of trial is in every case omitted; like
newly entered schoolboys their early vagaries are not taken into
account; but after that, every merit and every fault is watched with
jealous care, and, when the day of judgment comes, the order of the
arrangement of the chronometers in the list is determined solely by
consideration of their irregularities of rate as expressed in the
columns, "Difference between greatest and least," and, "Greatest
difference between one week and the next."
The Royal Observatory, according to a superstition not wholly extinct,
is the head-quarters, not only of Astronomy, but of Astrology. The
structure is awfully regarded, by a small section of the community which
ignorance has still left among us, as a manufactory of horoscopes, and a
repository for magic mirrors and divining-rods. Not long ago a
well-dressed woman called at the Observatory gate to request a hint as
to the means of recovering a lost sum of money; and recently, somebody
at Brighton dispatched the liberal sum of five shillings in a
post-office order to the same place, with a request to have his nativity
cast in return! Another, only last year, wrote as follows: "I have been
informed that there are persons at the Observatory who will, by my
inclosing a remittance and the hour of my birth, give me to understand
_who is to be my wife_? An early answer, stating all particulars, will
oblige," &c.
This sketch descriptive of its real duties and uses are not necessary to
relieve the Greenwich Observatory from the charge of being an abode of
sorcerers and astrologers. A few only of the most ignorant can yet
entertain such notions of its character; but they are not wholly
unfounded. Magicians, whose symbols are the Arabic numerals, and whose
_arcana_ are mathematical computations, daily foretell events in that
building with unerring certainty. They pre-discover the future of the
stars down to their minutest evolution and eccentricity. From data
furnished from the Royal Observatory, is compiled an extraordinary
prophetic Almanack from which all other almanacks are copied. It
foretells to a second when and where each of the planets may be seen in
the heavens at any minute for the next three years. The current number
of the Nautical Almanack is for the Year of Grace 1853.
In this quiet sanctuary, then, the winds are made to register their own
course and force, and the rain to gauge its own quantity as it falls;
the planets are watched to help the mariner to steer more safely over
the seas; and the heavens themselves are investigated for materials from
which their future as well as their past history may be written.
RAPID GROWTH OF AMERICA.
Every one who visits America has something to say of the rapidity with
which towns spring up in the West. Sir Charles Lyell, however, mentions
some facts which remind us very forcibly how close to our own times was
the settlement of the first English colony upon the continent. At
Plymouth he sees the tombs of the first pilgrims, who came out in the
Mayflower. Some of the houses which they built of brick brought from
Holland, are still remaining, with their low rooms and paneled walls. In
some private houses he saw many venerated heir-looms, kept as relics of
the first settlers; among others, an antique chair of carved wood, which
came over in the Mayflower, and which still retains the marks of the
staples which fixed it to the floor of the cabin. He also saw a chest,
or cabinet, which had belonged to Peregrine White, the first child born
in the colony. Part of the rock upon which the pilgrim fathers landed
has been removed to the centre of the town, and, with the names of
forty-two of their number inscribed upon it, inclosed within an iron
railing. This is the American _Roll of Battle Abbey_. But to return to
Peregrine White, the first child born in the colony: Colonel Perkins,
the munificent founder of the asylum for the blind, where we found our
friend Laura Bridgman, informed Sir Charles Lyell, in 1846, "that there
was but one link wanting in the chain of personal communication between
himself and Peregrine White." White was known to a man of the name of
Cobb, whom Colonel Perkins visited, in 1807, with some friends, who
still survive. This Cobb remembered when there were many Indians near
Plymouth; the inhabitants of the town frequently firing a cannon to
frighten them, to which cannon the Indians gave the name of "Old
Speakum." So that, in this case, one link is sufficient to connect men
now alive with the first whites born in New England, and with the time
when Indians were in the neighborhood of the first town that was
settled.
As a pendant to this, we may mention something connected with the
originals of that other continent which our race is peopling at the
antipodes. A few weeks ago, we were dining at the table of a naval
officer, well known in the scientific and literary world, upon which
occasion he mentioned, that being off the infant town of Sydney, in New
South Wales, in the year 1806, he ate some of the first home-bred
bullock which was killed in the colony. The son of the first governor
having just returned from the colony, which he had now made his home,
happening to be of our party, added, that "since that time their
progress had been so rapid, that this year they were to melt down two
million sheep for their tallow."
There are three events in the history of the world which will bear
comparison with this rapid extension of the English race. The first--and
this has always appeared to us to be the most striking occurrence in
history--is the marvelous manner in which a handful of Greeks, under
Alexander and his successors, overran and held for a long period the
whole of the East. The wonder is increased when we consider the
difficulty of maintaining communications in that part of the world.
They, in a great measure, changed the language and ideas of the East.
The Gospel was written in Greek; and the law of Moses, the writings of
the Hebrew prophets, were translated into Greek on the banks of the
Nile. A Greek kingdom was ever able to maintain itself for a long period
of time on the very confines of Tartary; and specimens of the
Græco-Bactrian coinage are even to this day abundant in that part of the
world. All this, however, passed away, and has not left any very obvious
traces on the present state of things. The second event was the
establishment of the Roman empire. Strongly as we are disposed to
maintain that, on a general view of human affairs, every thing happens
for the best, yet we may say of the Roman empire that it was in many
respects a giant evil. No man of great original genius ever spoke the
Roman language; in the sense in which many Greeks, and among ourselves
Bacon, Shakspeare, and Newton, were men of original genius. There was a
time when there were men of spirit and ability in every Greek city:
there was a time when the Roman empire governed the world and there was
not one great man from Britain to the Euphrates. Having fulfilled its
destiny--which seems to have been the introduction into the Western
World of the ideas of unity, law, and order, though unintentionally on
its part, for it was nothing but a military despotism--it perished as it
deserved, and its language is now nowhere spoken.
The third event was the irruption of the Barbarians. That a higher
civilization followed this every body knows; but how many centuries did
it take to civilize the Barbarians?
Now these, the three great events of past history, are all dwarfed very
much when compared with what we are now, doing. We are sending out every
year, literally, hundreds of thousands of civilized men to people two
continents in opposite hemispheres, and on opposite sides of the globe.
In North America there are already twenty millions of our race. This
population doubles every twenty-two years. Australia will inevitably
become "the Queen of the South." Now that literature has given
permanency to language, no other tongue than ours will ever be spoken
upon these continents. We can see no limit to the spread of our laws,
literature, and language. Greek and Roman greatness are really, in
comparison, nothing to this. And, compared with the millions of
civilized men which we have sent and are sending to occupy so large a
portion of the earth's surface, how insignificant becomes the irruption
of some savage, or half-savage hordes, into Italy, France, Spain, and
England!
At a time when civilization is at a standstill, if not retrograding,
upon the continent of Europe, it is very delightful, particularly to an
Englishman, to have such a picture to contemplate.--_Frazer's
Magazine._
[From the London Times.]
LORD COKE AND LORD BACON.
Lord Campbell has devoted a considerable portion of his first volume of
the Lives of the Chief Justices of England to the biography of Sir
Edward Coke. The theme is worthy of the space afforded it. Independently
of the professional renown of this great man, there are circumstances
connected with his career that render it, perhaps, more deeply
interesting than that of any other legal functionary. He began the world
with the immortal Bacon; the two were rivals during life; they fought
together for distinction, and were even competitors in love. Both were
devoured by a raging desire for wealth and honors, both gained the
objects of their fiery ambition, and neither found happiness when they
were acquired. If Bacon was more unscrupulous than Coke in the ignoble
race, his fall also was more fatal and ignominious. Both represent to
our minds distinct forms of undoubted greatness. _The Body of the Common
Law of England_ is the type that speaks for Coke. The glory of human
wisdom shines forever around the drooping head of Bacon. Both teach
posterity how much intellectual grandeur may co-exist with the most
glaring moral turpitude; both pay homage to virtue by seeking refuge in
disgrace in the tranquil pursuits that have since immortalized them.
Bacon, with a genius only less than angelic, condescends to paltry
crime, and dies branded. Coke, with a profound contempt for the arts
that Bacon loved, enraged by disappointment, takes revenge for neglect,
and dies a patriot. In the days of Coke there would seem to have been a
general understanding on the part of royal sycophants to mislead the
monarch, and all became his sycophants who received his favors. Coke is
no exception to the rule. It is true enough that to him we are mainly
indebted for the movement which, beginning on the 30th of January, 1621,
ended that very day eight-and-twenty years with the decapitation of the
king; but it is likewise undeniable that the nation's difficulties would
have waited some time longer for solution had not the defender of the
people's rights been inoculated with a love of liberty by the sudden
application of the royal lancet, whose sharp edge his judicious
self-love would never have provoked. Coke was born in what a Royalist of
the days of Charles the First might well have called "the good old
times," when Queens were gentle despots and Parliaments the most devoted
of self-constituted slaves; when Mr. Speaker "upon his allegiance was
commanded, if a certain bill be exhibited, not to read it," and when
"Mr. Vice-Chamberlain, to the great comfort of the Speaker and the
House, brought answer of Her Majesty's acceptance of the submission" of
legislators who had presumed to speak of matters "not proper and
pertinent for the house to deal in." Elizabeth was on her splendid
throne when Coke, having quitted the University of Cambridge without a
degree, was working like a horse at Clifford's-inn. Stony-hearted and
stony-minded, he loved neither poetry nor pleasure. From the moment he
began the appointed task of his life, he dreamed of nothing but fame,
and of that only for the sake of the sterling recompense it brings.
Friendships not convertible to cash, Coke resolutely foreswore at the
commencement of his career, and he was blessed with none at the close of
it. Spenser yielded him no delight, Shakespeare no seduction. The study
of law began at three in the morning, and, with short intervals of rest,
ceased at nine in the evening, at which hour the indefatigable student
at last took repose. Fortified by such discipline, and brim full of law,
Coke was called to the bar in the year 1578, being then twenty-seven
years of age, and he rose in his profession as rapidly as he had all
along resolved to rise.
In pursuance of his design Coke married well in 1582; the lady was
young, beautiful, and accomplished; virtues thrown, as it were, into the
bargain, since the lawyer had been well satisfied with the ample fortune
by which they were accompanied. Before he was thirty years old the
desperate money-seeker had made himself master of manor upon manor, and
laid the foundation of the enormous possessions which at length alarmed
the Crown, lest they should prove too magnificent for a subject. In 1585
he was elected Recorder of Coventry, in 1586 of Norwich, and in 1592 of
London itself. In the last-named year he was also appointed Reader in
the Inner Temple by the Benchers, and in 1592, being in his forty-first
year, by the influence of Burleigh, he was made Solicitor-General to the
Queen. The solicitorship secured the Speakership of the House of
Commons, according to custom. Coke in his address to the Queen upon his
appointment compared himself to a star in the heavens, "which is but
_opacum corpus_ until it receiveth light from the sun." Her Majesty in
answer graciously condescended to accept the metaphor, for she informed
her humble Speaker that liberty of speech was granted him, "but you must
know what privilege you have; not to speak every one what he listeth, or
what cometh in his brain to utter, but your privilege is ay or no;
wherefore, Mr. Speaker, Her Majesty's pleasure is, that if you perceive
any idle heads which will meddle with reforming the church and
transforming the commonwealth, and do exhibit bills to such purpose, you
receive them not until they be viewed and considered by those who it is
fitter should consider of such things, and can better judge of them."
The times were sweetly Arcadian. Elizabeth should be painted a
shepherdess, and her faithful Parliament a meek and timid flock about
her.
The obsequiousness of Coke to his Royal mistress was in perfect keeping
with his character. Nothing exceeds his abject servility while in the
sunshine, save his fixed malignity when dismissed to the shade. In 1594
the office of Attorney-General became vacant; Coke regarded the prize as
his own until he found one ready to dispute it with him. Bacon, eager
to outstrip his rival, had made interest at Court, and, had his age been
as ripe as his genius, Coke might have been thrust aside in the
encounter. Intrigues failed, because "one precedent of so raw a youth
being promoted to so great a place" it was impossible to find. Coke was
left master of the field, but neither combatant forgot the result of the
contest. The new Attorney-General declined his marvelous opponent for
Solicitor-General, and Bacon resolved to take unmeasured revenge both
for the disappointment and the insult.
A fitter tool for its melancholy work prerogative never found than in
Attorney-General Coke, who, for his punishment, lived to destroy the
foul abuses he had been paid to nourish. The liberty of the subject is
identified with the name of the individual who, as much as any of his
time, sought to crush it. The perversions of criminal law to which this
man condescended, as prosecutor for the Crown, are familiar to the
readers of history. His cruel arrogance and atrocious bearing toward the
unfortunate (we do not speak of the guilty) can never be forgotten. Lord
Campbell tells us that Coke, in his age, "made noble amends" for the
licentious and unscrupulous dealings of his earlier life. We can not
admit the term; for repentance to be noble, the motive must be pure. The
gain to society by the stand made by Coke, in the name of the people,
against the encroachments of the Crown is not to be overestimated; but
respect does not attach to the soiled instrument by which our blessings
were secured. A singular instance of the brutality of the
Attorney-General, and of his overstrained duty to the Crown, occurred at
the trial of the unfortunate and gallant Essex. Well may the present
biographer exclaim, "This was a humiliating day for our _order_!" Essex
had striven hard to obtain for Bacon the office then held by his
accuser. The insurrection in the city might sooner be pardoned than that
offense, which, indeed, received no mercy. For once, Bacon and Coke
ceased to be rivals, but only that they might be co-partners in
inexpiable guilt. Divines may preach even to the infidel of the inherent
rottenness of our fallen nature, when they can point to Bacon, the pride
of humanity, the wonder of the civilized world, imploring to be counsel
_against_ his best friend and benefactor, and leaving no base means
untried to bring that high and chivalrous spirit to the scaffold.
Prerogative never boasted so rare a sacrifice; the might of kings never
extorted so signal an acknowledgment.
On the 27th of June, 1598, Coke lost his wife, who had borne him ten
children. His memorandum-book feelingly describes the virtues of the
departed; but within four months of her burial the disconsolate widower
had taken unto himself a second mate, whose beauty, though
extraordinary, was still surpassed, as before, by the brilliancy of the
marriage portion. Lady Hatton, daughter of Thomas Cecil, was the widow
of the nephew of Lord Chancellor Hatton, and but 20 years of age when
she agreed to become the wife of a man whom she disliked on her
wedding-day and hated ever afterward. Bacon, her cousin, had preferred
his suit to be rejected, although Lord Essex, then powerful enough, had
declared to the lady that "if he had a daughter of his own he would
rather match her with the accomplished lawyer than with a man of far
greater titles." To spite Bacon, and to add to his heaps, Coke consented
to a private marriage, to break the law, and to listen complacently to
the openly declared aversion of his bride. He enjoyed all the happiness
he had earned. The lady refused to adopt her husband's name, spurned his
company and dry pursuits, took her pleasure abroad, and, giving birth to
a daughter, flatly refused to live with him any longer; and greater
punishment came hereafter.
Upon the death of Elizabeth, James I. conferred upon Coke the dignity of
knighthood, and continued him in his office. The first appearance of the
Attorney-General as public prosecutor in the new reign was at the trial
of the adventurous Raleigh, the judge upon the occasion being the
reformed highway-robber, Popham, who made amends for the delinquencies
of his youth by hanging every criminal within his reach. Raleigh laid
down the law as Coke himself years afterward knew how to define it; but
the legal tools of the Court were neither to be shamed nor argued from
their purpose. Coke disgracefully bullied the high-souled prisoner.
Popham shrunk from his calm and unanswerable defense; but both contrived
to prove him guilty. The instance is one of a hundred. So long as Coke
could find payment for unclean work, he betrayed no uneasy desire to
wash his fingers. It was not until all hope of turning sycophancy to
further account was gone that he took up with patriotism.
Coke's last prosecution as Attorney-General was a famous one; for the
objects of his malevolence were no other than Guy Faux and his
accomplices. It would have been sufficient to dismiss in silence to the
scaffold men upon whom the brand of guilt was so deeply fixed. Justice
required no more than their death; much more readily satisfied the
officious love of the king's devoted servant. While the Attorney-General
was hurling insult at the heads of the culprits, one of them, Sir
Everard Digby, interrupted him, confessing "that he deserved the vilest
death, and the most severe punishment that might be," but humbly
petitioned "for mercy and some moderation of justice." Coke, overflowing
with mercy, promised him such moderation as he might discover in the
Psalms, where it is written, "Let his wife be a widow and his children
vagabonds--let his posterity be destroyed, and in the next generation
let his name be quite put out." Digby's pathetic appeal upon the rising
of the Court may well stand side by side with this brutality. "If I may
but hear any of your lordships," exclaimed the doomed man, "say you
forgive me, I shall go more cheerfully to the gallows." The lords
answered in Coke's presence, "The Lord forgive you, and we do."
The gunpowder plot disposed of, Coke, in the year 1606, became Chief
Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, "fatigued," as Lord Campbell has
it, "if not satiated, with amassing money at the bar." The new judge was
as fully alive to the rights of his office as he had been before to the
prerogatives of the king. The pedantic presumption of James was safe
till it rubbed against the more stubborn pride of Coke. The monarch was
of opinion that the constitution and the law allowed him personally to
try causes between his loyal subjects. "By my soul," he said pettishly
to Coke, who begged leave to differ, "I have often heard the boast that
your English law was founded upon reason. If that be so, why have not I
and others reason as well as you, the judges?" Coke explained why and by
the manner of his explanation compelled the king to think no more of his
folly. Unfortunately for all parties His Majesty at the same time
remembered the affront.
Had he been disposed to forget it there was one at his side eager enough
to jog his memory. Bacon's advancement depended upon the downfall of
Coke, and the sublimest yet meanest of men gave his whole heart to the
accomplishment of either work. By the elevation of the Attorney-General,
Bacon had become Solicitor-General, and a more servile spirit never
filled the office. The first triumph of Coke over the king encouraged
him to more open war against despotism and abuse. The monarchs before
the Revolution loved to repair laws by royal proclamation, and none were
busier at that trade than the silly James. Coke asserted his authority
again, and again defeated him. To console His Majesty and to help
himself, Bacon recommended the _promotion_ of the incorrigable
assailant. Coke was made, accordingly, Chief Justice of the King's
Bench. The profits of the office were much less than those of the
Justice of the Common Pleas, although the rank was higher. Hence Coke's
disgust at the bettering of his condition, which also helped Bacon on a
step, by furnishing Attorney-General Hobart with the chiefship of the
Common Pleas.
Coke continued to display his independence during the three years that
he presided in the Court of King's Bench, but he had stopped short of
committing an act that might deprive him of the reversion of the
Chancellorship, to which his great acquirements and reputation well
entitled him. Bacon, always alive to his master's interests, urged upon
the king the danger of elevating the Chief Justice to the woolsack, long
before the vacancy occurred. "If you take my Lord Coke," said he, "this
will follow: first, your Majesty shall put an overruling nature into an
overruling place, which may breed an extreme; next, you shall blunt his
industries in the matter of your finances, which seemeth to aim at
another place (the office of Lord Treasurer); and, lastly, popular men
are no sure mounters for your Majesty's saddle." His Majesty, easily
frightened, cherished the warning, while Coke took no pains to disarm
suspicion. His triumphs gave him courage, and he went from bad to worse.
A question arose as to the power of the king to grant ecclesiastical
preferments to be held along with a bishopric. A learned counsel at the
bar denied the power. Bacon, the Attorney-General, not caring to defend
it, mentioned another power of the king's--viz., his right to prohibit
the hearing of any cause in which his prerogative is concerned until he
should intimate his pleasure on the matter to his judges; and advised
such a prohibition to be issued in the case in question. Coke treated
the advice with disdain, proceeded as with an ordinary cause, heard it,
and judicially determined it. Bacon could have wished for nothing more
suicidal.
Coke was summoned before the Privy Council. It was suddenly discovered
that he had been guilty of a breach of duty while Attorney-General, in
concealing a bond given to the Crown by Sir Christopher Hatton. He had
also misconducted himself in a dispute with the Lord Chancellor
respecting injunctions; moreover, he had insulted the king when called
before him in the case of _commendams_. In addition, many extravagant
and exorbitant opinions had been set down and published in his reports
for positive and good law. So heinous an offender could not go
unpunished. By royal mandate the delinquent was suspended from his
office of Chief Justice. Simple suspension, however, brought no
consolation to Bacon, who goaded the king to downright persecution. On
the 16th of November, 1616, the Chief Justice received his dismissal.
Lord Campbell pleads for the fallen man, who heard his sentence with
"dejection and tears." We must, nevertheless, not forget the weakness
when we reflect upon his abject submission to royalty during his days of
dependence, and as we approach the more stormy times when the spirit of
vengeance incited him to grapple with royalty in the temper of a rebel.
Magnanimity is wanting throughout.
As Coke tumbled down Bacon rose to his zenith. While the former was
shedding tears for his dismissal, the latter was intoxicated with joy by
his elevation to the Chancellorship. The defeated judge, however, was
not the man to submit without a struggle to his fate. By his second wife
he had a daughter: she had reached a marriageable age and was heiress to
a princely fortune. Coke resolved that she should marry Sir John
Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham's eldest brother. Sir John was very
poor, and the Duke of Buckingham all powerful. The union effected, what
should hinder his return to favor? Bacon, terrified at the plot,
encouraged mother and daughter to resist the will of the father; but Sir
John and the duke were more than a match for the counter-conspirators.
After a gallant opposition the ladies yielded, and the marriage was
celebrated at Hampton Court, "in the presence of the king and queen and
all the chief nobility of England." Sir John was old enough to be his
wife's father, but that was a trifle. The results of the match were such
as might be expected. Coke was restored to the Privy Council, but
received no judicial promotion. Sir John Villiers and his wife never
passed a happy day together, and before long the lady eloped with Sir
John Howard. "After traveling abroad in man's attire she died young,
leaving a son, who, on the ground of illegitimacy, was not allowed to
inherit the estate and honors of her husband."
The last blow decided the ex-Chief Justice. Rejected as a friend, he
gave himself up to the warfare of relentless enmity. The fame and glory
acquired at this juncture by his rival in consequence of the publication
of the _Novum Organum_ gave venom to his hate. A Parliament was called
in 1620. Coke then in his 70th year, was elected for the borough of
Liskeard. Just after his election the office of Lord Treasurer fell
vacant. Coke had looked for it, but it was given elsewhere. All things
served to fan the fire of his indignation. The Puritans were returned to
the House in great numbers. Coke, hitherto a high churchman, placed
himself at their head, and prepared for deadly opposition. Opportunities
came to him as thick as summer leaves upon a tree. The nation had rare
cause for discontent, and no man knew better than he how to turn popular
grievances to personal account.
He set to work at once. A motion was made by Mr. Secretary Calvert for a
supply. Sir Edward Coke moved as an amendment, "That supply and
_grievances_ should be referred together to a committee of the whole
House." The amendment was carried, and business forthwith commenced with
an attack upon the monopolists. A report was drawn up directed against
the king's prerogative, in virtue of which monopolies flourished, and
Coke himself carried it to the bar of the Upper House, where Bacon, as
Chancellor received him. The second effort must have been a labor of
love indeed. The Lord Chancellor himself had been accused of a king
bribes. A committee of the House was appointed to investigate the
charges, and Coke, with a willing heart, guided its proceedings. The
king sent a message to the Commons with the view of saving Bacon from
the odium of an inquiry thus vindictively pursued, but Coke had fastened
on his prey and was not to be cajoled or frightened off. He besought the
Commons not to stand between justice and a huge delinquent, and he
procured Bacon's impeachment. The impeachment being voted, Coke, to his
intense delight, was ordered to conduct it. Bacon, conscious of the
spirit with which his rival would settle to his task, disappointed his
vengence by pleading guilty to the charge; but it was the deep
humiliation of the chancellor, in the presence of his foe, to hear in
one breath both judgement and destruction pronounced. The battle was
over. Bacon made restitution to society by withdrawing from public life
and devoting himself to the dignified occupations which have since
induced his countrymen to forget the failings that compelled the
fortunate seclusion. Coke having brought his victim to the dust left him
there to linger. He never visited his fallen enemy. The two never met
again.
Revenge called for further sacrifice. Coke's fierceness against the
Court increased rather than abated with Bacon's removal. The
Chancellorship which might have made him a royalist and high churchman
again was bestowed upon another. The shortsightedness of monarchs is
even more unpardonable than their crimes. After a struggle against
adjournment, led on by Coke, Parliament was adjourned in May to meet
again in November. In a letter to the Speaker the king desired it to be
made known in his name unto the House, "that none therein shall presume
henceforth to meddle with any thing concerning our Government or deep
matters of state." Coke, leading the opposition, moved "a protestation,"
which was carried and entered on the journals. The king, with his own
hand, tore the protestation out of the Journal Book, and declaring it
"an usurpation which the majesty of a king can by no means endure" at
once dissolved the Parliament.
Coke for his pains was committed to the Tower, but after a few months'
imprisonment was released at the intercession of the Prince of Wales.
Before the popular leader was fairly in harness again, that Prince was
on the throne. Charles's first Parliament was called in 1625, and Coke
was returned for Coventry. A motion for supply being submitted, Coke
moved as an amendment for a committee to inquire into the expenditure of
the Crown. The amendment was carried, and His Majesty, according to
custom in such cases, dissolved the Parliament. Supply being, however,
indispensable to monarchs as to meaner men, a new Parliament was
summoned, and Coke, now 75 years old, was returned without solicitation
for Norfolk. This Parliament fared no better than its predecessor, and
upon another attempt being made the king suffered the extreme
mortification of seeing his unappeasable pursuer returned for two
counties. His Majesty opened the session with a stern rebuke. He did not
call it a threatening, "for he scorned to threaten any but his equals,
but an admonition from him who by nature and duty has most care of his
people's preservation and prosperity." Whatever it might be, whether
menace or reproof, it had no effect upon the sturdy veteran. "What a
word," exclaimed Coke in his speech upon the usual motion for supply "is
that _franchise_! The lord may tax his villein, high or low; but it is
against the franchise of the land for freemen to be taxed but by their
consent in Parliament;" and the speaker implored his listeners to
withhold that consent while there remained one legitimate grievance for
the king to remedy. Having made his speech he brought forward and
carried resolutions that are memorable in the annals of our
constitutional history, and which, indeed, were made the foundation of
the Habeas Corpus Act fifty years afterward. His next step was his
greatest. He formed the famous _Petition of Right_, the second _Magna
Charta_, as it has been aptly called, of the nation's liberties. The
petition enumerated all the abuses of prerogative under which the
country groaned, and after declaring them all to be contrary to law
"assumed the form of an act of the Legislature, and in the most express
and stringent terms protected the people in all time to come from
similar oppressions." The king attempted to evade the obligation about
to be forced upon him, but his adversary was as inflexible as iron, "not
that he distrusted the king, but that he could not take his trust save
in a Parliamentary way." The lords passed the bill, but loyally
introduced a proviso that completely nullified its operation. "This,"
exclaimed Coke, "turns all about again," and at his instigation the
accommodating proviso was at once rejected. The Lords agreed "not to
insist upon it," and nothing was left for His Majesty but to resort,
under the direction of Buckingham, to fraudulent dealing. The trick did
not answer. Buckingham was denounced, the Petition of Right, in spite of
the king, received the royal assent in due form, and bonfires throughout
London testified to the happiness of the people at the restoration of
their liberty. King Charles would never have died on the scaffold had he
not violated in later years the solemn pledge he gave on this occasion
to his trusting subjects.
With this achievement ended Coke's political career. The _Petition of
Right_ was carried in 1628. He was absent from Parliament during the
short and violent session of 1629, and before another Parliament was
called he had quitted life. He died in 1634, in the eighty-third year of
his age and in the full possession of his faculties. What he performed
for public liberty is seen; his claims to esteem as a lawyer were
recognized in his own time, and are still acknowledged. His publications
are the hand-books of our legal men. His general character may be
gathered from our short record. It is further to be noted that he had a
sublime contempt for science and literature of every kind. Upon the
title-page of his copy of the _Novum Organum_, presented to him by the
author, he wrote,
"It deserves not to be read in schooles,
But to be freighted in the _Ship of Fools_."
Shakspeare and Ben Jonson were _vagrants_, deserving of the stocks;
poetry was foolishness; law, politics, and money-making the sole
occupations worthy of a masculine and vigorous mind. "For a profound
knowledge of the common law of England," says the biographer, "he stands
unrivaled. As a judge he was above all suspicion of corruption; yet most
men," adds Lord Campbell, "I am afraid, would rather have been Bacon
than Coke." We participate in his Lordship's fear. Aware of the lax
period in which both flourished, we are willing to attribute many of
the faults of both to the age in which their lot was cast. Their virtues
and intellectual prowess were all then own; and let us once enter upon a
comparison of these, and the lofty, universal genius of Bacon will shine
as the noonday sun in the firmament where the duller orb of Coke shall
cease to be visible.
[From Household Words.]
FATHER AND SON.
One evening in the month of March, 1798--that dark time in Ireland's
annals whose memory (overlooking all minor subsequent _émeutes_) is
still preserved among us, as "the year of the rebellion"--a lady and
gentleman were seated near a blazing fire in the old-fashioned
dining-room of a large, lonely mansion. They had just dined; wine and
fruit were on the table, both untouched, while Mr. Hewson and his wife
sat silently gazing at the fire, watching its flickering light becoming
gradually more vivid as the short spring twilight faded into darkness.
At length the husband poured out a glass of wine, drank it off, and then
broke silence, by saying,
"Well, well, Charlotte, these are awful times; there were ten men taken
up to-day for burning Cotter's house at Knockane; and Tom Dycer says
that every magistrate in the country is a marked man."
Mrs. Hewson cast a frightened glance toward the windows, which opened
nearly to the ground, and gave a view of a wide, tree-besprinkled lawn,
through whose centre a long straight avenue led to the high-road. There
was also a footpath at either side of the house, branching off through
close thickets of trees, and reaching the road by a circuitous route.
"Listen, James!" she said, after a pause, "what noise is that?"
"Nothing but the sighing of the wind among the trees. Come, wife, you
must not give way to imaginary fears."
"But really I heard something like footsteps on the gravel, round the
gable-end--I wish--"
A knock at the parlor door interrupted her.
"Come in."
The door opened, and Tim Gahan, Mr. Hewson's confidential steward and
right-hand man, entered, followed by a fair-haired, delicate-looking boy
of six years' old, dressed in deep mourning.
"Well, Gahan, what do you want?"
"I ask your honor's pardon for disturbing you and the mistress; but I
thought it right to come and tell you the bad news I heard."
"Something about the rebels, I suppose?"
"Yes, sir; I got a whisper just now that there's going to be a great
rising entirely, to-morrow; thousands are to gather before daybreak at
Kilcrean bog, where I'm told they've a power of pikes hiding; and then
they're to march on and sack every house in the country. I'll engage,
when I heard it, I didn't let grass grow under my feet, but came off
straight to your honor, thinking maybe you'd like to walk over this fine
evening to Mr. Warren's, and settle with him what's best to be done."
"Oh, James! I beseech you, don't think of going."
"Make your mind easy, Charlotte; I don't intend it: not that I suppose
there would be much risk; but, all things considered, I think I'm just
as comfortable at home."
The steward's brow darkened, as he glanced nervously toward the end
window, which jutting out in the gable, formed a deep angle in the outer
wall.
"Of course, 'tis just as your honor plases, but I'll warrant you there
would be no harm in going. Come, Billy," he added, addressing the child,
who by this time was standing close to Mrs. Hewson, "make your bow, and
bid good-night to master and mistress."
The boy did not stir, and Mrs. Hewson taking his little hand in hers,
said,
"You need not go home for half-an-hour, Gahan; stay and have a chat with
the servants in the kitchen, and leave little Billy with me--and with
the apples and nuts," she added, smiling as she filled the child's hands
with fruit.
"Thank you, ma'am," said the steward, hastily. "I can't stop--I'm in a
hurry home, where I wanted to leave this brat to-night; but he _would_
follow me. Come, Billy; come this minute, you young rogue."
Still the child looked reluctant, and Mr. Hewson said, peremptorily,
"Don't go yet, Gahan: I want to speak to you by-and-by; and you know the
mistress always likes to pet little Billy."
Without replying, the steward left the room; and the next moment his
hasty footsteps resounded through the long flagged passage that led to
the offices.
"There's something strange about Gahan, since his wife died," remarked
Mrs. Hewson. "I suppose 'tis grief for her that makes him look so
darkly, and seem almost jealous when any one speaks to his child. Poor
little Billy! your mother was a sore loss to you."
The child's blue eyes filled with tears, and pressing closer to the
lady's side, he said,
"Old Peggy doesn't wash and dress me as nicely as mammy used."
"But your father is good to you?"
"Oh, yes, ma'am, but he's out all day busy, and I've no one to talk to
me as mammy used; for Peggy is quite deaf, and besides she's always busy
with the pigs and chickens."
"I wish I had you, Billy, to take care of and to teach, for your poor
mother's sake."
"And so you may, Charlotte," said her husband. "I'm sure Gahan, with all
his odd ways, is too sensible a fellow not to know how much it would be
for his child's benefit to be brought up and educated by us, and the boy
would be an amusement to us in this lonely house. I'll speak to him
about it before he goes home. Billy, my fine fellow, come here," he
continued, "jump up on my knee, and tell me if you'd like to live here
always and learn to read and write."
"I would, sir, if I could be with father, too."
"So you shall; and what about old Peggy?"
The child paused.
"I like to give her a pen'north of snuff and a piece of tobacco every
week, for she said the other day that _that_ would make her quite
happy."
Mr. Hewson laughed, and Billy prattled on, still seated on his knee;
when a noise of footsteps on the ground, mingled with low suppressed
talking, was heard outside.
"James, listen! there's the noise again."
It was now nearly dark, but Mr. Hewson, still holding the boy in his
arms, walked toward the window and looked out.
"I can see nothing," he said; "stay, there are figures moving off among
the trees, and a man running round to the back of the house--very like
Gahan he is, too."
Seizing the bell-rope, he rang it loudly, and said to the servant who
answered his summons,
"Fasten the shutters and put up the bars, Connell; and then tell Gahan I
want to see him."
The man obeyed; candles were brought, and Gahan entered the room.
Mr. Hewson remarked that, though his cheeks were flushed, his lips were
very white, and his bold dark eyes were cast on the ground.
"What took you round the house just now, Tim?" asked his master, in a
careless manner.
"What took me round the house, is it? Why, then, nothing in life, sir,
but that just as I went outside the kitchen door to take a smoke, I saw
the pigs, that Shaneen forgot to put up in their stye, making right for
the mistress's flower-garden; so I just put my _dudheen_, lighted as it
was, into my pocket, and ran after them. I caught them on the grand walk
under the end window, and, indeed, ma'am, I had my own share of work
turning them back to their proper spear."
Gahan spoke with unusual volubility, but without raising his eyes from
the ground.
"Who were the people," asked his master, "whom I saw moving through the
western grove?"
"People! your honor--not a sign of any people moving there, I'll be
bound, barring the pigs."
"Then," said Mr. Hewson, smiling, to his wife, "the miracle of Circe
must have been reversed, and swine turned into men; for, undoubtedly,
the dark figures I saw were human beings."
"Come, Billy," said Gahan, anxious to turn the conversation, "will you
come home with me now? I am sure 'twas very good of the mistress to give
you all them fine apples."
Mrs. Hewson was going to propose Billy's remaining, but her husband
whispered, "Wait till to-morrow." So Gahan and his child were allowed to
depart.
Next morning the magistrates of the district were on the alert, and
several suspicious-looking men found lurking about, were taken up. A hat
which fitted one of them was picked up in Mr. Hewson's grove; the gravel
under the end window bore many signs of trampling feet; and there were
marks on the wall as if guns had rested against it. Gahan's information
touching the intended meeting at Kilerean bog proved to be totally
without foundation; and after a careful search, not a single pike or
weapon of any description could be found there. All these circumstances
combined certainly looked suspicious; but, after a prolonged
investigation, as no guilt could be actually brought home to Gahan, he
was dismissed. One of his examiners, however, said privately, "I advise
you take care of that fellow, Hewson. If I were in your place, I'd just
trust him as far as I could throw him, and not an inch beyond."
An indolent, hospitable Irish country gentleman, such as Mr. Hewson, is
never without an always shrewd and often roguish prime minister, who
saves his master the trouble of looking after his own affairs, and
manages every thing that is to be done in both the home and foreign
departments--from putting a new door on the pig-stye, to letting a farm
of an hundred acres on lease. Now in this, or rather these capacities,
Gahan had long served Mr. Hewson; and some seven years previous to the
evening on which our story commences, he had strengthened the tie and
increased his influence considerably by marrying Mrs. Hewson's favorite
and faithful maid. One child was the result of this union; and Mrs.
Hewson, who had no family of her own, took much interest in little
Billy--more especially after the death of his mother, who, poor thing!
the neighbors said, was not very happy, and would gladly, if she dared,
have exchanged her lonely cottage for the easy service of her former
mistress.
Thus, though for a time Mr. and Mrs. Hewson regarded Gahan with some
doubt, the feeling gradually wore away, and the steward regained his
former influence.
After the lapse of a few stormy months, the rebellion was quelled: all
the prisoners taken up were severally disposed of by hanging,
transportation, or acquittal, according to the nature and amount of the
evidence brought against them; and the country became as peaceful as it
is in the volcanic nature of our Irish soil ever to be.
The Hewsons' kindness toward Gahan's child was steady and unchanged.
They took him into their house, and gave him a plain but solid
education; so that William, while yet a boy, was enabled to be of some
use to his patron, and daily enjoyed more and more of his confidence.
* * * * *
Another evening, the twentieth anniversary of that with which this
narrative commenced, came round. Mr. and Mrs. Hewson were still hale and
active, dwelling in their hospitable home. About eight o'clock at night,
Tim Gahan, now a stooping, gray-haired man, entered Mr. Hewson's
kitchen, and took his seat on the corner of the settle next the fire.
The cook, directing a silent, significant glance of compassion toward
her fellow-servants, said,
"Would you like a drink of cider, Tim, or will you wait and take a cup
of tay with myself and Kitty?"
The old man's eyes were fixed on the fire, and a wrinkled hand was
planted firmly on each knee, as if to check their involuntary trembling.
"I'll not drink any thing this night, thank you kindly, Nelly," he said,
in a slow, musing manner, dwelling long on each word.
"Where's Billy?" he asked, after a pause, in a quick, hurried tone,
looking up suddenly at the cook, with an expression in his eyes which,
as she afterward said, took away her breath.
"Oh, never heed Billy! I suppose he's busy with the master."
"Where's the use, Nelly," said the coachman, "in hiding it from him?
Sure, sooner or later, he must know it. Tim," he continued, "God knows
'tis sorrow to my heart this blessed night to make yours sore--but the
truth is, that William has done what he oughtn't to do to the man that
was all one as a father to him."
"What has he done? what will you _dar_ say again my boy?"
"Taken money, then," replied the coachman, "that the master had marked
and put by in his desk; for he suspected this some time past that gold
was missing. This morning 'twas gone; a search was made, and the marked
guineas were found with your son William."
The old man covered his face with his hands, and rocked himself to and
fro.
"Where is he now?" at length he asked, in a hoarse voice.
"Locked up safe in the inner store-room; the master intends sending him
to jail early to-morrow morning."
"He will not," said Gahan, slowly. "Kill the boy that saved his
life!--no, no."
"Poor fellow! the grief is setting his mind astray--and sure no wonder!"
said the cook, compassionately.
"I'm not astray!" cried the old man, fiercely. "Where's the
master?--take me to him."
"Come with me," said the butler, "and I'll ask him will he see you."
With faltering steps the father complied: and when they reached the
parlor, he trembled exceedingly, and leant against the wall for support,
while the butler opened the door, and said,
"Gahan is here, sir, and wants to know will you let him speak to you for
a minute."
"Tell him to come in," said Mr. Hewson, in a solemn tone of sorrow, very
different from his ordinary cheerful voice.
"Sir," said the steward, advancing, "they tell me you are going to send
my boy to prison--is it true?"
"Too true, indeed, Gahan. The lad who was reared in my house, whom my
wife watched over in health, and nursed in sickness--whom we loved
almost as if he were our own, has _robbed_ us, and that not once or
twice, but many times. He is silent and sullen, too, and refuses to tell
why he stole the money, which was never withheld from him when he wanted
it. I can make nothing of him, and must only give him up to justice in
the morning."
"No, sir, no. The boy saved your life; you can't take his."
"You're raving, Gahan."
"Listen to me, sir, and you won't say so. You remember this, night
twenty years? I came here with my motherless child, and yourself and the
mistress pitied us, and spoke loving words to him. Well for us all you
did so! That night--little you thought it!--I was banded with them that
were sworn to take your life. They were watching you outside the window,
and I was sent to inveigle you out, that they might shoot you. A faint
heart I had for the bloody business, for you were ever and always a good
master to me; but I was under an oath to them that I darn't break,
supposing they ordered me to shoot my own mother. Well! the hand of God
was over you, and you wouldn't come with me. I ran out to them, and I
said, 'Boys, if you want to shoot him, you must do it through the
window,' thinking they'd be afeard of that; but they weren't--they were
daring fellows, and one of them, sheltered by the angle of the window,
took deadly aim at you. That very moment you took Billy on your knee,
and I saw his fair head in a line with the musket. I don't know exactly
then what I said or did, but I remember I caught the man's band, threw
it up, and pointed to the child. Knowing I was a determined man. I
believe they didn't wish to provoke me; so they watched you for a while,
and when you didn't put him down, they got daunted, hearing the sound of
soldiers riding by the road, and they stole away through the grove. Most
of that gang swung on the gallows, but the last of them died this
morning quietly in his bed. Up to yesterday he used to make me give him
money--sums of money to buy his silence--and it was for that I made my
boy a thief. It was wearing out his very life. Often he went down on his
knees to me, and said, 'Father, I'd die myself sooner than rob my
master, but I can't see _you_ disgraced. Oh, let us fly the country!'
Now, sir, I have told you all--do what you like with me--send me to
jail, I deserve it, but spare my poor, deluded, innocent boy!"
It would be difficult to describe Mr. Hewson's feelings, but his wife's
first impulse was to hasten to liberate the prisoner. With a few
incoherent words of explanation, she led him into the presence of his
master, who, looking at him sorrowfully but kindly, said,
"William, you have erred deeply, but not so deeply as I supposed. Your
father has told me every thing. I forgive him freely, and you also."
The young man covered his face with his hands, and wept tears more
bitter and abundant than he had ever shed since the day when he
followed his mother to the grave. He could say little, but he knelt on
the ground, and clasping the kind hand of her who had supplied to him
that mother's place, he murmured,
"Will _you_ tell him I would rather die than sin again?"
Old Gahan died two years afterward, truly penitent, invoking blessings
on his son and on his benefactors; and the young man's conduct, now no
longer under evil influence, was so steady and so upright, that his
adopted parents felt that their pious work was rewarded, and that, in
William Gahan, they had indeed a son.
[From Fraser's Magazine.]
DIPLOMACY--LORD CHESTERFIELD.
The qualifications required for the diplomatic career, we need hardly
say, are many and various. To a perfect knowledge of history and the law
of nations should be united a knowledge of the privileges and duties of
diplomatic agents, an acquaintance with the conduct and management of
negotiations, the physical and moral statistics, the political,
military, and social history of the powers with which the embasssador's
nation comes into most frequent intercommunication. To this varied
knowledge, it is needless to state, the negotiator should join
moderation, dexterity, temper, and tact. An embassador should be a man
of learning and a man of the world; a man of books and a man of men, a
man of the drawing-room and a man of the counting-house; a _preux
chevalieur_, and a man of labor and of business. He should possess quick
faculties, active powers of observation, and that which military men
call the _coup d'oeil_. He should be of urbane, pleasant, and affable
manners; of cheerful temper, of good humor, and of good sense. He should
know when and where to yield, to retreat, or to advance; when to press
his suit strongly, or when merely gently to insinuate it indirectly,
and, as it were, by inuendo. He should know how to unbend and how to
uphold his dignity, or rather the dignity of his sovereign; for it his
business, in whatever quarter of the world he may be placed, to maintain
the rights and dignities of his sovereign with vigor and effect. It is
the union of these diverse, and yet not repugnant qualities, that gives
to an embassador _prestige_, ascendency, and power over the minds of
others, that acquires for him that reputation of wisdom,
straightforwardness, and sagacity, which is the rarest and most valuable
gift of a statesman. One part of the science of diplomacy may be, by
even a dull man, mastered without any wonderful difficulties. It is that
positive, fundamental, and juridical portion of the study which may be
found in books, in treatises; in the history of treaties and of wars; in
treatises on international law; in memoirs, letters, and negotiations of
embassadors; in historical and statistical works concerning the states
of Europe, the balance of power, and the science of politics generally.
But the abstract, hypothetical, and variable portions of the craft--or,
if you will, of the science--depending on ten thousand varying and
variable circumstances--depending on persons, passions, fancies, whims;
caprices royal, national, parliamentary, and personal, is above theory,
and beyond the reach of books; and can only be learned by experience, by
practice, and by the most perfect and intuitive tact. The traditional
political maxims, the character of the loading sovereigns, statesmen,
and public men in any given court, as well as the conduct of
negotiations, may be acquired by study, by observation, by a residence
as secretary, as _attaché_; but who, unless a man of real genius for his
art--who, unless a man of real ability and talent, shall seize on, fix,
and turn to his purpose, the ever-mobile, the ever-varying phases of
courts, of camps, of councils, of senators, of parliaments, and of
public bodies? No doubt there are certain great cardinal and leading
principles with which the mind of every aspirant should be stored. But
the mere knowledge of principles, and of the history of the science can
never alone make a great embassador, any more than the reading of
treatises on the art of war can make a great commander.
An embassador at a first-rate court should, indeed, be the minister of
foreign affairs for his country on a small scale; and we know well
enough that the duties devolving on a minister for foreign affairs are
grave, are delicate, are all important.
The functions appertaining to the ministry for foreign affairs have been
in England during the last two years, and certainly also were from 1793
to 1815, the most important and the most difficult connected with the
public administration. A man to fill such a post properly, requires not
merely elevation and uprightness of character, but experience, tried
discretion, the highest capacity, the most extensive and varied
knowledge and accomplishments. Yet how few embassadors (we can scarcely
name one) have been in our day, or, indeed, for the last century,
elevated into Principal Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs! Such
promotions in France have been matters of every-day occurrence since and
previous to 1792. Dumouriez, Talleyrand, Reinhard, Champagny, Maret,
Bignon, Montmorency, Chauteaubriand, Polignac, Sebastiani, De Broglie,
Guizot, Soult, had all been embassadors before they were elevated into
the higher, the more responsible, and the more onerous office. In
England, since the accession of George I., we can scarcely cite,
speaking off-hand, above four instances.
In 1716 there was Paul Methuen, who had been embassador to Portugal in
the reign of Queen Anne, named Secretary of State, for a short time, in
the absence of Earl Stanhope; there was Philip Dormer, earl of
Chesterfield, in 1746; there was John, duke of Bedford, who succeeded
Lord Chesterfield in 1748, and who had previously been embassador to
Paris; and there was Sir Thomas Robinson in 1754, who had been an
embassador to Vienna. In our own day there is scarcely an instance. For
though George Canning was embassador for a short time to Lisbon, and the
Marquis of Wellesley to Spain; though the Duke of Wellington was
embassador to Paris, was charged with a special mission to Russia, was
plenipotentiary at Verona, yet none of these noblemen and gentlemen ever
regularly belonged to the diplomatic corps. The most illustrious and
striking instance of an embassador raised into a Secretary of State is
the case of Philip Dormer Stanhope, earl of Chesterfield The character
of no man within a century and a half has been so misrepresented and
misunderstood. Lord John Russell, in the _Bedford Correspondence_, which
he edited, charges this nobleman with conducting the French nobility to
the guillotine and to emigration. But Lord Chesterfield died on the 24th
March, 1773, sixteen years before 1789, and nineteen years before 1792.
To any man of reading and research--to any man of a decent acquaintance
with literature, it is unnecessary now to vindicate the character of the
Earl of Chesterfield. He was unequaled in his time for the solidity and
variety of his attainments; for the brilliancy of his wit; for the
graces of his conversation, and the polish of his style. His embassy to
Holland marks his skill, his dexterity, and his address, as an able
negotiator; and his administration of Ireland indicates his integrity,
his vigilance, and his sound policy as a statesman and as a politician.
He was at once the most accomplished, the most learned, and the most
far-seeing of the men of his day; and in our own, these is not one
public man to compare with him. He foresaw and foretold, in 1756, that
French Revolution whose outbreak he did not live to witness. In 1744 he
was admitted into the cabinet, on his own terms, and was soon after
intrusted with a second embassy to Holland, in which his skill and
dexterity were universally admitted. He was not more remarkable for a
quick insight into the temper of others, than for a command of his own.
In history, in literature, in foreign languages, he was equally a
proficient. With classical literature he had been from his boyhood
familiar. He wrote Latin prose with correctness, ease, and purity; and
spoke that tongue with a fluency and facility of the rarest among
Englishmen, and not very common even among foreigners. In the House of
Lords his speeches were more admired and extolled than any others of the
day. Horace Walpole had heard his own father, had heard Pitt, had heard
Pulteney, had heard Wyndham, had heard Carteret; yet he in 1743
declared, as is recorded by Lord Mahon, that the finest speech he had
ever listened to was one from Chesterfield.
For the diplomatic career, Chesterfield prepared himself in a manner not
often practiced in his own, and never practiced by Englishmen in our
day. Not content, as an undergraduate of Cambridge, with assiduously
attending a course of lectures on civil law at Trinity Hall, he
applied--as the laws and customs of other countries, and the general
law of Europe, were not comprehended in that course--to Vitriarius, a
celebrated professor of the University of Leyden and, at the
recommendation of the professor, took into his house a gentleman
qualified to instruct him. Instead of pirouetting it in the _coulisses_
of the opera, or in the Redouten Saal of Vienna, instead of graduating
at the Jardin Mabille, or the Salle Ventadour, instead of breakfasting
at the Café Anglais, instead of dining at the Café de Paris, or
swallowing his ices, after the Italiens or Académie Royale, at
Tortoni's, instead of attending a _funcion_ or bull-fight at Madrid, or
spending his mornings and evenings at Jägers's Unter den Linden at
Berlin, instead of swallowing Beaune for a bet against Russian Boyars at
Petersburgh or Moscow, at Andrieux's French Restaurant, or spending his
nights at the San Carlos at Naples, or the Scala at Milan, Chesterfield,
eschewing _prima donnas_, and the delights of French cookery, and the
charms of French vaudevilles, set himself down in the town, and in the
university in which Joseph Scaliger was a professor, and from whence
those famous Elzevir editions of classical works issued, to learn the
public law of Europe. These are the arts by which to attain the eminence
of a Walsingham and a Burghley, of a D'Ossat and a Jeannin, of a Temple
and a De Witt.
Qui cupit optatam cursu contingere metam,
Multa tulit fecitque puer, sudavit et alsit.
[From the Dublin University Magazine.]
THOMAS MOORE.
How many associations rise to the mind at the name of MOORE! The
brilliant wit, the elegant scholar, the most charming poet of
_sentiment_ our literature possesses! His vivacity and versatility were
quite as remarkable as his fancy and command of melody. He has been
admitted, by rare judges of personal merit, to have been, with the
single exception of the late Chief Justice Bushe, the most attractive of
companions. An attempt has, in some quarters, we have heard, been made
to represent Moore as sacrificing to society talents meant for graver
pursuits than convivial enjoyments; and it has been insinuated that he
wanted that manly sternness of character, without which there can be no
personal dignity or political consistency. The facts of Moore's life
overthrow, of themselves, such insinuations. It would be difficult,
indeed, to point to any literary character who has, during the
vicissitudes of an eventful age, more honorably and steadfastly adhered
to the same standard of opinion--_qualis ab incepto_. His honorable
conduct, when compelled to pay several thousand pounds, incurred by the
error of his deputy at Bermuda (for whose acts he was _legally_
responsible), exhibits the manliness of his nature. He determined, by
honest labor, to pay off the vast demand upon him, even though it made
him a beggar! Several of the Whig party came forward and offered in a
manner most creditable to them, to effect a subscription for the
purpose of paying off the poet's debt. Foremost among them was a
delicate young nobleman, with sunken cheek and intellectual aspect, who,
while traveling for his health on the Continent, had met Moore, with
whom he journeyed for a considerable time, and from whom he parted with
an intense admiration of the poet's genius and manly character. The
young nobleman--then far from being a rich man--headed the list with
eleven hundred pounds. The fact deserves to be recorded to the honor of
that young nobleman, who, by slow and sure degrees, has risen to be
prime minister of England--Lord John Russell.
Of the fact of Moore's steadfastly refusing to accept the subscription
offered to be raised for him by his aristocratic Whig friends, there can
be no doubt whatever; and the matter is more creditable to him when the
fact is remembered that it was not he himself who committed the error by
which he was rendered liable to the judgment given against him. He might
also have sheltered himself under the example of Charles James Fox, who
consented to accept a provision made for him by the leaders of his
party. But Moore detested all eleemosynary aid. He speaks in one of his
most vigorous poems with contempt of that class of "_patriots_" (to what
vile uses can language be profaned!),
"Who hawk their country's wrongs as beggars do their sores."
While sojourning at Paris upon that occasion Moore received a very
remarkable offer. Barnes, the editor of the _Times_, became severely
ill, and was obliged to recruit his health by a year's rest, and the
editorship of the _Times_ was actually offered to Moore, who, in telling
the story to a brilliant living Irishman, said, "I had great difficulty
in refusing. The offer was so tempting--_to be the Times for a
twelvemonth!_" The offering him the editorship of "the daily miracle"
(as Mr. Justice Talfourd called it) might, however, have been only a
_ruse de guerre_ of his aristocratic and political friends to bring him
back to London, where, for a variety of reasons social and political,
his company was then very desirable.
There is a very interesting circumstance connected with the birth of
Moore, which deserves record. The fact of the birth, as every one knows,
took place at Aungier-street, and its occasion was at a moment
singularly appropriate for the lyric poet being ushered into the world.
Jerry Keller, the wit and humorist, rented apartments in the house of
Moore's brother, in Aungier-street, and had a dinner-party on the very
day of the poet's birth. Just as the guests were assembled, and the
dinner on the table, it was announced to them that Mrs. Moore's
_accouchement_ had taken place, and that she was in a precarious state,
the physicians particularly enjoining that no noise should be made in
the house: a difficult matter, when Keller, Lysaght, and other convivial
spirits were assembled. What was to be done? One of the company, who
lodged near him, solved the difficulty by proposing that the feast
should be adjourned to his house close by, and that the viands and wine
should be transferred thither. "Ay!" cried Jerry Keller, "be it so; let
us adjourn _pro re nata."_ Thus, in the hour of feasting, just as Keller
dropped one of his best witticisms, was Moore's birth registered by a
classic pun.
Moore had few friends whom he loved more than Mr. Corry, and he has left
upon record an exquisite proof of his friendship in the following lines,
which are very affecting to read at the present time.
On one occasion, Moore and Corry were ordered, by medical advice, to
drink port wine, while they were sojourning for their health at
Brighton. The _idem velle atque idem nolle_ was perfectly applicable to
their friendship, and they detested port wine with perfect antipathy.
However, they were under advice which required obedience. Moore got the
port-wine from his wine-merchant, Ewart; but in traveling from London it
had been shaken about so much, and was so muddy, that it required a
strainer. Mr. Corry bought a very handsome wine-strainer, prettily
ornamented with Bacchanalian emblems, and presented it, with a friendly
inscription, to Moore, who wrote in reply, the following lines, never,
we believe, before printed:
TO JAMES CORRY, ESQ.,
ON HIS MAKING ME A PRESENT OF A WINE-STRAINER.
This life, dear Corry, who can doubt,
Resembles much friend Ewart's wine--
When first the rosy drops come out,
How beautiful, how clear they shine!
And thus, a while they keep their tint
So free from even a shade with some,
That they would smile, did you but hint,
That darker drops would ever come.
But soon the ruby tide runs short,
Each moment makes the sad truth plainer--
Till life, like old and crusty port,
When near its close, requires a strainer.
_This_ friendship can alone confer,
Alone can teach the drops to pass--
If not as bright as once they were,
At least unclouded through the glass.
Nor, Corry, could a boon be mine,
Of which my heart were fonder, vainer,
Than thus, if life grew like old wine,
To have _thy_ friendship for its strainer!
THOMAS MOORE.
Brighton, June, 1825.
[From Household Words.]
THE APPETITE FOR NEWS.
The last great work of that great philosopher and friend of the modern
housewife, Monsieur Alexis Soyer, is remarkable for a curious omission.
Although the author--a foreigner--has abundantly proved his extensive
knowledge of the weakness of his adopted nation; yet there is one of our
peculiarities which he has not probed. Had he left out all mention of
cold punch in connection with turtle; had his receipt for curry
contained no cayenne; had he forgotten to send up tongues with
asparagus, or to order a service of artichokes without napkins, he would
have been thought forgetful; but when--with the unction of a gastronome,
and the thoughtful skill of an artist--he marshals forth all the
luxuries of the British breakfast-table, and forgets to mention its
first necessity, he shows a sort of ignorance. We put it to his already
extensive knowledge of English character, whether he thinks it possible
for any English subject whose means bring him under the screw of the
income-tax, to break his fast without--a newspaper.
The city clerk emerging through folding doors from bed to sitting-room,
though thirsting for tea, and hungering for toast, darts upon that
morning's journal with an eagerness, and unfolds it with a satisfaction,
which show that all his wants are gratified at once. Exactly at the same
hour, his master, the M.P., crosses the hall of his mansion. As he
enters the breakfast parlor, he fixes his eye on the fender, where he
knows his favorite damp sheet will be hung up to dry. When the noble
lord first rings his bell, does not his valet know that, however tardy
the still-room-maid may be with the early coffee, he dares not appear
before his lordship without the "Morning Post?" Would the minister of
state presume to commence the day in town till he has opened the
"Times," or in the country till he has perused the "Globe?" Could the
oppressed farmer handle the massive spoon for his first sip out of his
Sèvres cup till he has read of ruin in the "Herald" or "Standard?" Might
the juvenile Conservative open his lips to imbibe old English fare or to
utter Young England opinions, till he has glanced over the "Chronicle?"
Can the financial reformer know breakfast-table happiness till he has
digested the "Daily News," or skimmed the "Express?" And how would it be
possible for mine host to commence the day without keeping his customers
waiting till he has perused the "Advertiser" or the "Sun?"
In like manner the provinces can not--once a week at least--satisfy
their digestive organs till their local organ has satisfied their minds.
Else, what became of the 67,476,768 newspaper stamps which were issued
in 1848 (the latest year of which a return has been made) to the 150
London and the 238 provincial English journals: of the 7,497,064 stamps
impressed on the corners of the 97 Scottish, and of the 7,028,956 which
adorned the 117 Irish newspapers? A professor of the new science of
literary mensuration has applied his foot-rule to this mass of print,
and publishes the result in "Bentley's Miscellany." According to him,
the press sent forth, in daily papers alone, a printed surface amounting
in twelve months to 349,308,000 superficial feet. If to these are added
all the papers printed weekly and fortnightly in London and the
provinces the whole amounts to 1,446,150,000 square feet of printed
surface, which was, in 1849, placed before the comprehensive vision of
John Bull. The area of a single morning paper--the Times say--is more
than nineteen and a half square feet, or nearly five feet by four,
compared with an ordinary octavo volume, the quantity of matter daily
issued is equal to three hundred pages. There are four morning papers
whose superficies are nearly as great, without supplements, which they
seldom publish. A fifth is only half the size. We may reckon, therefore,
that the constant craving of Londoners for news is supplied every
morning with as much as would fill about twelve hundred pages of an
ordinary novel; or not less than five volumes.
These acres of print sown broad-cast, produce a daily crop to suit every
appetite and every taste. It has winged its way from every spot on the
earth's surface, and at last settled down and arranged itself into
intelligible meaning, made instinct with ink. Now it tells of a
next-door neighbor; then of dwellers in the utter-most corners of the
earth. The black side of this black and white daily history, consists of
battle, murder, and sudden death; of lightning and tempest; of plague,
pestilence, and famine; of sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion; of
false doctrine, heresy, and schism; of all other crimes, casualities,
and falsities, which we are enjoined to pray to be defended from. The
white side chronicles heroism, charitableness, high purpose, and lofty
deeds; it advocates the truest doctrines, and the practice of the most
exalted virtue: it records the spread of commerce, religion, and
science; it expresses the wisdom of the few sages and shows the
ignorance of the neglected many--in fine, good and evil, as broadly
defined or as inextricably mixed in the newspapers, as they are over the
great globe itself.
With this variety of temptation for all tastes, it is no wonder that
those who have the power have also the will to read newspapers. The
former are not very many in this country where, among the great bulk of
the population, reading still remains an accomplishment. It was so in
Addison's time. "There is no humor of my countrymen," says the
Spectator, "which I am more inclined to wonder at, than their great
thirst for news." This was written at the time of imposition of the tax
on newspapers, when the indulgence in the appetite received a check from
increased costliness. From that date (1712) the statistical history of
the public appetite for news is written in the Stamp Office. For half a
century from the days of the Spectator, the number of British and Irish
newspapers was few. In 1782 there were only seventy-nine, but in the
succeeding eight years they increased rapidly. There was "great news"
stirring in the world in that interval--the American War, the French
Revolution; beside which, the practice had sprung up of giving domestic
occurrences in fuller detail than heretofore, and journals became more
interesting from that cause. In 1790 they had nearly doubled in number,
having reached one hundred and forty six. This augmentation took place
partly in consequence of the establishment of weekly papers--which
originated in that year--and of which thirty-two had been commenced
before the end of it. In 1809, twenty-nine and a half millions of stamps
were issued to newspapers in Great Britain. The circulation of journals
naturally depends upon the materials existing to fill them. While wars
and rumors of wars were rife they were extensively read, but with the
peace their sale fell off. Hence we find, that in 1821 no more than
twenty-four millions of newspapers were disposed of. Since then the
spread of education--slow as it has been--has increased the
productiveness of journalism. During the succeeding eight-and-twenty
years, the increase may be judged of by reference to the figures we have
already jotted down; the sum of which is, that during the year 1848
there were issued, for English, Irish, and Scotch newspapers, eighty-two
millions of stamps--more than thrice as many as were paid for in 1821.
The cause of this increase was chiefly the reduction of the duty from an
average of three-pence to one penny per stamp.
A curious comparison of the quantity of news devoured by an
Englishman and a Frenchman, was made in 1819, in the _Edinburgh
Review_--"thirty-four thousand papers," says the writer, are "dispatched
daily from Paris to the departments, among a population of about
twenty-six millions, making one journal among 776 persons. By this, the
number of newspaper readers in England would be to those in France as
twenty to one. But the number and circulation of country papers in
England are so much greater than in France, that they raise the
proportion of English readers to about twenty-five to one, and our
papers contain about three times as much letter-press as a French paper.
The result of all this is that an Englishman reads about seventy-five
times as much of the newspapers of his country in a given time, as a
Frenchman does of his. But in the towns of England, most of the papers
are distributed by means of porters, not by post; on the other hand, on
account of the number of coffee-houses, public gardens, and other modes
of communication, less usual in England, it is possible that each French
paper may be read, or listened to, by a greater number of persons, and
thus the English mode of distribution may be compensated. To be quite
within bounds, however, the final result is, that every Englishman reads
daily fifty times as much as the Frenchman does, of the newspapers of
his country."
From this it might be inferred that the craving for news is peculiarly
English. But the above comparison is chiefly affected by the
restrictions put upon the French press, which, in 1819, were very great.
In this country, the only restrictions were of a fiscal character; for
opinion and news there was, as now, perfect liberty. It is proved, at
the present day, that Frenchmen love news as much as the English; for
now that all restriction is nominally taken off, there are as many
newspapers circulated in France in proportion to its population, as
there are in England.
The appetite for news is, in truth, universal; but is naturally
disappointed, rather than bounded, by the ability to read. Hence it is
that the circulation of newspapers is proportioned in various countries
to the spread of letters; and if their sale is proportionately less in
this empire, than it is among better taught populations, it is because
there exist among us fewer persons who are able to read them;--either at
all, or so imperfectly, that attempts to spell them give the tyro more
pain than pleasure. In America, where a system of national education has
made a nation of readers (whose taste is perhaps susceptible of vast
improvement, but who are readers still) the sale of newspapers greatly
exceeds that of Great Britain. All over the continent there are also
more newspaper _readers_, in proportion to the number of people, though
perhaps, fewer buyers, from the facilities afforded by coffee-houses and
reading-rooms, which all frequent. In support of this fact, we need go
no farther than the three kingdoms. Scotland--where national education
has largely given the ability to read--a population of three millions
demands yearly from the Stamp Office seven and a half millions of
stamps; while in Ireland, where national education has had no time for
development, eight millions of people take half a million of stamps
_less_ than Scotland.
Although it can not be said that the appetite for mere news is one of an
elevated character; yet as we have before hinted, the dissemination of
news takes place side by side with some of the most sound, practical,
and ennobling sentiments and precepts that issue from any other channels
of the press. As an engine of public liberty, the newspaper press is
more effectual than the Magna Charta, because its powers are wielded
with more ease, and exercised with more promptitude and adaptiveness to
each particular case.
Mr. F. K. Hunt in his "Fourth Estate" remarks, "The moral of the history
of the press seems to be, that when any large proportion of a people
have been taught to read, and when upon this possession of the tools of
knowledge, there has grown up a habit of perusing public prints, the
state is virtually powerless if it attempts to check the press. James
the Second in old times, and Charles the Tenth, and Louis Philippe, more
recently, tried to trample down the Newspapers, and everybody knows how
the attempt resulted. The prevalence or scarcity of newspapers in a
country affords a sort of index to its social state. Where journals are
numerous, the people have power, intelligence, and wealth; where
journals are few, the many are in reality mere slaves. In the United
States every village has its newspaper, and every city a dozen of these
organs of popular sentiment. In England we know how numerous and how
influential for good the papers are; while in France they have perhaps
still greater power. Turn to Russia, where newspapers are comparatively
unknown, and we see the people sold with the earth they are compelled to
till. Austria, Italy, Spain, occupy positions between the extremes--the
rule holding good in all, that in proportion to the freedom of the press
is the freedom and prosperity of the people."
[From Sharpe's Magazine]
A FEW WORDS ON CORALS.
It is the object of the following papers to illustrate the natural
history of the ocean, and to introduce to the reader a few of the forms
of life which the naturalist meets with in the deep sea. The sea that
bathes the globe contains as countless multitudes of living beings as
does the land we tread, and each possesses an organization as
interesting and as peculiar to itself, as any of the higher forms of the
animal creation. But the interest does not cease here, for these marine
invertebrata play an important part in the vast economy of nature, some
living but to afford food for the larger kinds, others devouring all
matter devoid of vitality, and so removing all putrescent materials,
with which the sea would otherwise be surcharged; while others, again,
living in large communities, surely and slowly, by their gradual growth,
so alter the physical construction of the globe as to render seas and
harbors unnavigable, and in many eases even to give rise in course of
ages to those islands, apparently of spontaneous growth, which are so
common in the Southern Seas.
Corals and Madrepores first claim our attention, because they occupy the
lowest place, with the exception of sponges, in the animal scale!
Indeed, so low is their organization, that former naturalists denied
their animal character, and from superficial examination of their
external appearance, placed them among the wonders of the vegetable
world. And from the arborescent and plant-like form assumed by many
kinds, in the Flustra and others, in which the resemblance to sea-weeds
is so strong as generally to cause them to be confounded together under
the same group, and being fixed to submarine rocks, or marine shells,
observers might easily have been led to the mistake, had not modern
research rectified the error. Corals and Madrepores, as they are known
to us, consist but of the stony skeletons of the animals themselves, for
in the living state, while dwelling in the ocean, each portion of the
stony framework was covered with an animal coating of gelatinous matter,
which, closely investing it, was the living portion of the animal. But
the structure of the animal is not simply this, for attached to
different portions of it in the living state are to be found a countless
number of little cells, which, armed with tentacles of great prehensile
and tactile powers, are the apertures through which the particles of
food are conveyed for the sustenance of the animal These bodies as they
may be called, are the analogues of that simple polyp, the common hydra,
which, abounding in almost every pond, has been long known to
naturalists. It consists of a single dilated gelatinous vesicle, which
is terminated at one extremity by a sucker, and at the other by a number
of contractile filaments, which serve as the tentaculæ, by which it
seizes its prey. This is all that represents the animal, the dilated
portion of the tube being the part in which the process of digestion is
carried on, and where the food is assimilated to the wants of the little
creature. These hydrae live singly, each animal being independent of
another, and each possesses the power of self-reparation; so that,
should it happen that a tentacle is lost, another sprouts to supply its
place, or should the naturalist by way of experiment divide it in half,
each portion immediately reproduces the wanting section. Such, then, is
briefly the structure of the simple fresh-water hydra, a polyp of common
occurrence, and from this description the reader will gain some idea of
the polyps of the Coral family before us; but he must remember that in
the case now under discussion, the polyps are aggregated together, a
number on one common stem, each possessing independent life, but all
ministering to the support of the compound animal.
The hydra, then, of the Coral and Madrepore, thus explained, would
appear to be the parts through which food is absorbed for the general
nourishment of the body, which, as before observed, consists simply of a
gelatinous film of animal matter, possessing but little evidence of
vitality. Here, then, is a community of nourishment, and with it also a
community of sensation, for if one portion be irritated, contiguous
portions of the animal are apt to sympathize. When the Coral polyps are
not in an active state, or in other words, when they are not in want of
food, these hydra-form polyps may not be visible, but being retracted
into cells found as depressions in the skeletons of the Madrepores, they
are lost to observation, and it is only when in quest of food and
nourishment that their contractile tentacles are expanded, and
distinctly prominent.
The physiology of the growth of the skeleton, both in the Madrepores and
the Coral, is the same. The entire skeleton, however ramified it may be,
or whatever form it may assume, is secreted by the living matter with
which it is invested, the materials for its formation being derived from
the element in which it lives; and as its deposition takes place at
different times, the central stem of some corals is apt to assume a
beautiful concentric arrangement of laminæ. But the material deposited
or secreted need not necessarily be hard or calcareous, but even may
partake of the character of horn or other flexible materials, as is the
case with some of the coral family. In other cases there is an
alternation of each material; and the necessity of this change in the
character of the skeleton will now demand our attention.
The common coral of the Mediterranean, possessing a stony skeleton, is
found in situations where its stunted form and its extreme hardness
sufficiently preserve it from the violence of the waves; but place a
coral under other circumstances, and expose it to the storms of the
Indian Ocean, where the waves rage with fury, dashing on and uprooting
all things within their power, and the structure of the simple coralium
would fail to withstand their violence. Here, then, under such
circumstances, in the case of the Gorgonia, nature has provided a horny
and flexible skeleton, which, spreading majestically in the sea, shall
be capable of bending beneath the weight of the superincumbent waves,
and so yielding to the storms. Nature has thus adapted herself to each
contingent circumstance.
The next point to which we shall advert will be coral formations, which
form so interesting a study to the naturalist and geologist. When we
consider that we have at hand only a soft, gelatinous covering,
stretched on a hard, stony frame-work--that the material on which this
animal substance exists is furnished by the sea in which it lives--we
can not but be surprised at the smallness of the means which nature uses
for the execution of her great designs. But time compensates for the
insignificance of the means employed, and the continued activity of
nature's architects, during continuous ages, accomplishes these
stupendous results, which have at various times excited the wonder of
the navigator, and aroused the attention of the naturalist. Many
examples of these are to be found in the Pacific Archipelago. Seas and
shallows, once navigable, become in the process of time so filled by
these living animals, as to become impassable, their stony skeletons
forming hard, massy rocks and impenetrable barriers, which, rising from
the bottom of the sea and shallows, constitute solid masonry of living
stones.
But besides thus aggregating in the neighborhood of land and continents,
formations similarly produced are constantly met with during the
circumnavigation of the globe. Not only barriers and reefs owe their
origin to these humble means, but large lands, stretching for miles in
the centre of the ocean, rise gradually from beneath the surface of the
sea, and, becoming clothed with verdure and vegetation, at last offer a
resting-place for the daring seafarer. But now occurs the interesting
question, How happens it that these islands are found in situations
where the sea is too deep to allow of any animal life to exist? And yet
these corals must have grown upward from some resting-place. The
researches of Darwin have shown that the greatest depth in which corals
live, is between thirty and forty fathoms beneath the surface of the
sea; hence it is absolutely certain that for every island some
foundation must exist in the sea for these reef-building animals to
attach themselves to. Such foundation, from the observation of Darwin,
would appear to be provided by submarine mountains which have gradually
subsided into the sea, having originally existed above its surface. Upon
these foundations the reef-building saxigenous corals have become
attached, and slowly accumulating in large numbers, and gradually
depositing their carbonate of lime, during the lapse of ages, by degrees
construct these large piles, which, at last emerging from the ocean's
bosom, appear as newly-formed continents and islands. Once above the
surface, the work of the corals is at an end; no longer exposed to the
salt water, the emerged portion dies, and then new agencies are called
into play, before its surface can be clothed with vegetable life. The
storms of the ocean and the rising waves gradually deposit on its
surface the sand and mud torn up from the bottom of the sea, and the
sea-weed, too, that is cast upon its tenantless shores soon crumbles
into mould, and unites with the debris of the former polyps. At last,
some seeds from the neighboring lands are driven to its strand, and
there finding a soil united for their growth, soon sprout, under the
influence of a tropical sun, into fresh life, and clothe the ocean isle
with verdure and vegetation.
Then, _last_, man comes, and taking possession of the land, erects him a
house to dwell in, and cultivating the soil he finds, soon converts the
ocean-rescued land into cultivated plains. Islands thus formed are
constantly increased in circumference by the same means as those that
gave them birth; the same agency is ever at work, adding particle on
particle to the rising land. But is it not strange that such simple
means can resist the ever-flowing and roaring ocean--that such simple
animals can uprear a masonry which shall resist the violence of the
waves and defy the power of the breakers? Is it not strange that a
single polyp can form a structure in the bosom of the ocean, which shall
stand, a victorious antagonist to the storm when works of man and other
"inanimate works of nature" would have crumbled into nothing before the
relentless fury of a disturbed ocean? "Let the hurricane tear up its
thousand huge fragments, yet what will that tell against the accumulated
labor of myriads of architects at work day and night, month after
month?" for here organic force is opposed to the raging elements, and
opposing, is victorious.
[From the Dublin University Magazine]
A NIGHT IN THE BELL INN.
Though few men are themselves on visiting terms with their ancestors,
most are furnished with one or two decently-authenticated ghost stories.
I myself am a firm believer in spectral phenomena, for reasons which I
may, perhaps, be tempted to give to the public whenever the custom of
printing in folio shall have been happily revived; meanwhile, as they
will not bear compression, I keep them by me, and content myself with
now and then stating a fact saving the theory to suggest itself. Now it
has always appeared to me that the apostles of spectres (if the phrase
will be allowed me) have, like other men with a mission, been, perhaps,
a little precipitate in assuming their facts, and sometimes find "true
ghosts" upon evidence much too slender to satisfy the hard-hearted and
unbelieving generation we live in. They have thus brought scandal not
only upon the useful class to which they belong, but upon the world of
spirits itself--causing ghosts to be so generally discredited, that
fifty visits made in their usual private and confidential way, will now
hardly make a single convert beyond the individual favored with the
interview; and, in order to reinstate themselves in their former
position, they will be obliged henceforward to appear at noon-day, and
in places of public resort.
The reader will perceive, then, that I am convinced of the equal
impolicy and impropriety of resting the claims of my clients (ghosts in
general) upon facts which will not stand the test of an impartial, and
even a skeptical scrutiny. And, perhaps, I can not give a happier
illustration of the temper of my philosophy, at once candid and
cautious, than is afforded by the following relation, for every tittle
of which I solemnly pledge my character at once as a gentleman and as a
metaphysician.
There is a very agreeable book by Mrs. Crowe, entitled "The Night Side
of Nature," and which among a _dubia cæna_ of authentic tales of terror,
contains several which go to show the very trivial causes which have
from time to time caused the reappearance of departed spirits in this
grosser world. A certain German professor, who, for instance, actually
_persecuted_ an old college friend with preternatural visitations for no
other purpose, as it turned out, than to procure a settlement of some
small six-and-eightpenny accounts, which he owed among his trades-people
at the time of his death. I could multiply, from my own notes, cases
still odder, in which sensible and rather indolent men, too, have been
at the trouble to re-cross the awful interval between us and the
invisible, for purposes apparently still less important--so trivial,
indeed, that for the present I had rather not mention them, lest I
should expose their memories to the ridicule of the unreflecting. I
shall now proceed to my narrative, with the repeated assurance, that the
reader will no where find in it a single syllable that is not most
accurately and positively true.
About four-and-thirty years ago I was traveling through Denbighshire
upon a mission which needed dispatch. I had, in fact, in my charge, some
papers which were required for the legal preliminaries to a marriage,
which was about to take place in a family of consideration, upon the
borders of that county.
The season was winter, but the weather delightful--that is to say, clear
and frosty; and, even without foliage, the country through which I
posted was beautiful. The subject of my journey was a pleasant one. I
anticipated an agreeable visit, and a cordial welcome; and the weather
and scenery were precisely of the sort to second the cheerful
associations with which my excursion had been undertaken. Let no one,
therefore, suggest that I was predisposed for the reception of gloomy or
horrible impressions. When the sun set we had a splendid moon, at once
soft and brilliant; and I pleased myself with watching the altered, and,
if possible, more beautiful effects of the scenery through which we were
smoothly rolling. I was to put up for the night at the little town of
----; and on reaching the hill--over which the approach to it is
conducted, about a short mile from its quaint little street--I
dismounted, and directing the postillion to walk his jaded horses
leisurely up the winding road, I trod on before him in the pleasant
moonlight, and sharp, bracing air. A little by-path led directly up the
steep acclivity, while the carriage-road more gradually ascended by a
wide sweep--this little path, leading through fields and hedgerows, I
followed, intending to anticipate the arrival of my conveyance at the
summit of the hill.
I had not proceeded very far when I found myself close to a pretty old
church, whose ivied tower, and countless diamond window panes, were
glittering in the moonbeams--a high, irregular hedge, overtopped by tall
and ancient trees inclosed it; and rows of funereal yews showed black
and mournful among the wan array of headstones that kept watch over the
village dead. I was so struck with the glimpse I had caught of the old
church-yard, that I could not forbear mounting the little stile that
commanded it--no scene could be imagined more still and solitary. Not a
human habitation was near--every sign and sound of life was reverently
remote; and this old church, with its silent congregation of the dead
marshaled under its walls, seemed to have spread round it a circle of
stillness and desertion that pleased, while it thrilled me.
No sound was here audible but the softened rush of waters, and that
sweet note of home and safety, the distant baying of the watch-dog, now
and then broken by the sharper rattle of the carriage-wheels upon the
dry road. But while I looked upon the sad and solemn scene before me,
these sounds were interrupted by one which startled, and, indeed, for a
moment, froze me with horror. The sound was a cry, or rather a howl of
despairing terror, such as I have never heard before or since uttered by
human voice. It broke from the stillness of the church-yard; but I saw
no figure from which it proceeded--though this circumstance, indeed, was
scarcely wonderful, as the broken ground, the trees, tall weeds, and
tomb-stones afforded abundant cover for any person who might have sought
concealment. This cry of unspeakable agony was succeeded by a silence;
and, I confess, my heart throbbed strangely, when the same voice
articulated, in the same tone of agony,
"Why will you trouble the dead? Who can torment us before the time? I
will come to you in my flesh, though after my skin worms destroy this
body--and you shall speak to me, lace to face."
This strange address was followed by another cry of despair, which died
away as suddenly as it was raised.
I never could tell why it was I was not more horror-stricken than I
really was by this mysterious, and, all things considered, even terrible
interpellation. It was not until the silence had again returned, and the
faint rustling of the frosty breeze among the crisp weeds crept toward
me like the stealthy approach of some unearthly influence, that I felt a
superstitious terror gradually inspire me, which hurried me at an
accelerated pace from the place. A few minutes, and I heard the friendly
voice of my charioteer hallooing to me from the summit of the hill.
Reassured, as I approached him, I abated my speed.
"I saw you standing on the stile, sir, by the church-yard," he said, as
I drew near, "and I ask your pardon for not giving you the hint before,
but they say it is not lucky; and I called to you loud and lusty to come
away, sir; but I see you are nothing the worse of it."
"Why, what is there to be afraid of there, my good fellow?" I asked,
affecting as much indifference as I was able.
"Why, sir," said the man, throwing an uneasy look in the direction,
"they do say there's a bad spirit haunts it; and nobody in these parts
would go near it after dark for love or money."
"Haunted!" I repeated; "and how does the spirit show himself?" I asked.
"Oh! lawk, sir, in all sorts of shapes--sometimes like an old woman
almost doubled in two with years," he answered, "sometimes like a little
child agoing along a full foot high above the grass of the graves; and
sometimes like a big black ram, strutting on his hind legs, and with a
pair of eyes like live coals; and some have seen him in the shape of a
man, with his arm raised up toward the sky, and his head hanging down,
as if his neck was broke. I can't think of half the shapes he has took
at different times; but they're all bad: the very child, they say, when
he comes in that shape, has the face of Satan--God bless us! and
nobody's ever the same again that sees him once."
By this time I was again seated in my vehicle, and some six or eight
minutes' quick driving whirled us into the old-fashioned street, and
brought the chaise to a full stop before the open door and well-lighted
hall of the Bell Inn. To me there has always been an air of
indescribable cheer and comfort about a substantial country hostelrie,
especially when one arrives, as I did, upon a keen winter's night, with
an appetite as sharp, and something of that sense of adventure and
excitement which, before the days of down-trains and tickets, always in
a greater or less degree, gave a zest to traveling. Greeted with that
warmest of welcomes for which inns, alas! are celebrated, I had soon
satisfied the importunities of a keen appetite; and having for some
hours taken mine ease in a comfortable parlor before a blazing fire, I
began to feel sleepy, and betook myself to my no less comfortable
bed-chamber.
It is not to be supposed that the adventure of the church-yard had been
obliterated from my recollection by the suppressed bustle and good cheer
of the "Bell." On the contrary, it had occupied me almost incessantly
during my solitary ruminations; and as the night advanced, and the
stillness of repose and desertion stole over the old mansion, the
sensations with which this train of remembrance and speculation was
accompanied became any thing but purely pleasant.
I felt, I confess, fidgety and queer--I searched the corners and
recesses of the oddly-shaped and roomy old apartment--I turned the face
of the looking-glass to the wall--I poked the fire into a roaring
blaze--I looked behind the window-curtains, with a vague anxiety, to
assure myself that nothing could be lurking there. The shutter was a
little open, and the ivied tower of the little church, and the tufted
tops of the trees that surrounded it, were visible over the slope of the
intervening hill. I hastily shut out the unwelcome object, and in a mood
of mind, I must confess, favorable enough to any freak my nerves might
please to play me, I hurried through my dispositions for the night,
humming a gay air all the time, to re-assure myself, and plunged into
bed, extinguishing the candle, and--shall I acknowledge the weakness?
nearly burying my head under the blankets.
I lay awake some time, as men will do under such circumstances, but at
length fatigue overcame me, and I fell into a profound sleep. From this
repose I was, however, aroused in the manner I am about to describe. A
very considerable interval must have intervened. There was a cold air in
the room very unlike the comfortable atmosphere in which I had composed
myself to sleep. The fire, though much lower than when I had gone to
bed, was still emitting flame enough to throw a flickering light over
the chamber. My curtains were, however, closely drawn, and I could not
see beyond the narrow tent in which I lay.
There had been as I awaked a clanking among the fire-irons, as if a
palsied hand was striving to arrange the fire, and this rather
unaccountable noise continued for some seconds after I had become
completely awake.
Under the impression that I was subjected to an accidental intrusion, I
called out, first in a gentle and afterward in a sharper tone,
"Who's there?"
At the second summons the sound ceased, and I heard instead the tread of
naked feet, as it seemed to me, upon the floor, pacing to and fro,
between the hearth and the bed in which I lay. A superstitious terror,
which I could not combat, stole over me; with an effort I repeated my
question, and drawing myself upright in the bed, expected the answer
with a strange sort of trepidation. It came in terms and accompanied
with accessories which I shall not soon forget.
The very same tones which had so startled me in the church-yard the
evening before, the very sounds which I had heard then and there, were
now filling my ears, and spoken in the chamber where I lay.
"Why will you trouble the dead? Who can torment us before the time? I
will come to you in my flesh, 'though after my skin worms destroy this
body,' and you shall speak with me face to face."
As I live. I can swear the words and the voice were the very same I had
heard on the occasion I have mentioned, but (and mark this) repeated to
_no one_. With feelings which I shall not attempt to describe, I heard
the speaker approach the bed--a hand parted the bed-curtains and drew
them open, revealing a form more horrible than my fancy had ever
seen--an almost gigantic figure--naked, except for what might well have
been the rotten remnant of a shroud--stood close beside my bed--livid
and cadaverous--grimed as it seemed with the dust of the grave, and
staring on me with a gaze of despair, malignity, and fury, too intense
almost for human endurance.
I can not say whether I spoke or not, but this infernal spectre answered
me as if I had.
"I am dead and yet alive," it said, "the child of perdition--in the
grave I am a murderer, but here I am APOLLYON. Fall down and worship
me."
Having thus spoken, it stood for a moment at the bedside, and then
turned away with a shuddering moan, and I lost sight of it, but after a
few seconds it came again to the bedside as before.
"When I died they put me under Mervyn's tombstone, and they did not bury
me. My feet lie toward the _west_--turn them to the east and I will
rest--maybe I will rest--I will rest--rest--rest."
Again the figure was gone, and once again it returned, and said,
"I am your master--I am your resurrection and your life, and therefore,
fall down and worship me."
It made a motion to mount upon the bed, but what further passed I know
not, for I fainted.
I must have lain in this state for a long time, for when I became
conscious the fire was almost extinct. For hours that seemed
interminable I lay, scarcely daring to breathe, and afraid to get up
lest I should encounter the hideous apparition, for aught I knew,
lurking close beside me. I lay, therefore, in an agony of expectation
such as I will not attempt to describe, awaiting the appearance of the
daylight.
Gradually it came, and with it the cheerful and reassuring sounds of
life and occupation. At length I mustered courage to reach the
bell-rope, and having rung lustily, I plunged again into bed.
"Draw the window-curtains--open the shutters," I exclaimed as the man
entered, and, these orders executed, "look about the room," I added,
"and see whether a cat or any other animal has got in."
There was nothing of the sort; and satisfied that my visitant was no
longer in the chamber, I dismissed the man, and hurried through my
toilet with breathless precipitation.
Hastening from the hated scene of my terrors, I escaped to the parlor,
whither I instantly summoned the proprietor of "the Bell" in _propria
persona_. I suppose I looked scared and haggard enough, for mine host
looked upon me with an expression of surprise and inquiry.
"Shut the door," said I.
It was done.
"I have had an uneasy night in the room you assigned me, sir; I may say
indeed, a _miserable_ night," I said.
"Pray," resumed I, interrupting his apologetic expressions of surprise,
"has any person but myself ever complained of--of being _disturbed_ in
that room?"
"Never," he assured me.
I had suspected the ghastly old practical joke, so often played off by
landlords in story-books, and fancied I might have been deliberately
exposed to the chances of a "haunted chamber." But there was no acting
in the frank look and honest denial of mine host.
"It is a very strange thing," said I hesitating; and "I do not see why I
should not tell you what has occurred. And as I could swear, if
necessary, to the perfect reality of the entire scene, it behoves you, I
think, to sift the matter carefully. For myself, I can not entertain a
doubt as to the nature of the truly terrible visitation to which I have
been subjected; and, were I in your position, I should transfer my
establishment at once to some other house as well suited to the purpose,
and free from the dreadful liabilities of this."
I proceeded to detail the particulars of the occurence of the past
night, to which he listened with nearly as much horror as I recited them
with.
"Mervyn's tomb!" he repeated after me; "why that's down there in L----r:
the churchyard you can see from the window of the room you slept in."
"Let us go there instantly," I exclaimed, with an almost feverish
anxiety to ascertain whether we should discover in the place indicated
any thing corroborative of the authenticity of my vision.
"Well, I shan't say no," said he, obviously bracing himself for an
effort of courage; "but we'll take Faukes, and James the helper, with
us; and please, sir, you'll not mention the circumstance as has occurred
to either on 'em."
I gave him the assurance he asked for, and in a few minutes our little
party were in full march upon the point of interest.
There had been an intense black frost, and the ground, reverberating to
our tread with the hollow sound of a vault, emitted the only noise that
accompanied our rapid advance. I and my host were too much preoccupied
for conversation, and our attendants maintained a respectful silence. A
few minutes brought us to the low, gray walls and bleak hedgerows that
surrounded the pretty old church, and all its melancholy and picturesque
memorials.
"Mervyn's tomb lies there, I think, sir," he said, pointing to a corner
of the church-yard, in which piles of rubbish, withered weeds, and
brambles were thickly accumulated under the solemn, though imperfect
shelter of the wintry trees.
He exchanged some sentences with our attendants in Welsh.
"Yes, sir, that's the place," he added, turning to me.
And as we all approached it, I bethought me that the direction in which,
as I stood upon the stile, I had heard the voice on the night preceding,
corresponded accurately with that indicated by my guides. The tomb in
question was a huge slab of black marble, supported, as was made
apparent when the surrounding brambles were removed, upon six pillars,
little more than two feet high each. There was ample room for a human
body to lie inside this funeral penthouse; and, on stooping to look
beneath, I was unspeakably shocked to see that something like a human
figure was actually extended there.
It was, indeed, a corpse, and, what is more, corresponded in every trait
with the infernal phantom which, on the preceding night, had visited and
appalled me.
The body, though miserably emaciated, was that of a large-boned,
athletic man, of fully six feet four in height; and it was, therefore,
no easy task to withdraw it from the receptacle where it had been
deposited, and lay it, as our assistants did, upon the tombstone which
had covered it. Strange to say, moreover, the feet of the body, as we
found it, had been placed toward the west.
As I looked upon this corpse, and recognized, but too surely, in its
proportions and lineaments, every trait of the apparition that had stood
at my bed-side, with a countenance animated by the despair and malignity
of the damned, my heart fluttered and sank within me, and I recoiled
from the effigy of the demon with terror; second only to that which had
thrilled me on the night preceding.
* * * * *
Now, reader--_honest_ reader--I appeal to your own appreciation of
testimony, and ask you, having these facts in evidence, and upon the
deposition of an eye and ear witness, whose veracity, through a long
life, has never once been compromised or questioned, have you, or have
you not, in the foregoing story, a well-authenticated ghost story?
Before you answer the above question, however, it may be convenient to
let you know certain other facts which were clearly established upon
the inquest that was very properly held upon the body which in so
strange a manner we had discovered.
I purposely avoid details, and without assigning the depositions
respectively to the witnesses who made them, shall restrict myself to a
naked outline of the evidence as it appeared.
The body I have described was identified as that of Abraham Smith, an
unfortunate lunatic, who had, upon the day but one preceding, made his
escape from the neighboring parish workhouse, where he had been for many
years confined. His hallucination was a strange, but not by any means an
unprecedented one. He fancied that he had died, and was condemned; and,
as these ideas alternately predominated, sometimes spoke of himself as
an "evil spirit," and sometimes importuned his keepers to "bury him;"
using habitually certain phrases, which I had no difficulty in
recognizing as among those which he had addressed to me. He had been
traced to the neighborhood where his body was found, and had been seen
and relieved scarcely half a mile from it, about two hours before my
visit to the church-yard! There were, further, unmistakable evidences of
some person's having climbed up the trellis-work to my window on the
previous night, the shutter of which had been left unbarred, and, as the
window might have been easily opened with a push, the cold which I
experienced, as an accompaniment of the nocturnal visit, was easily
accounted for. There was a mark of blood upon the window-stool, and a
scrape upon the knee of the body corresponded with it. A multiplicity of
other slight circumstances, and the positive assertion of the
chamber-maid that the window had been opened, and was but imperfectly
closed again, came in support of the conclusion, which was to my mind
satisfactorily settled by the concurrent evidence of the medical men, to
the effect that the unhappy man could not have been many hours dead when
the body was found.
Taken in the mass, the evidence convinced me; and though I might still
have clung to the preternatural theory, which, in the opinion of some
persons, the facts of the case might still have sustained, I candidly
decided with the weight of evidence, "gave up the ghost," and accepted
the natural, but still somewhat horrible explanation of the occurrence.
For this candor I take credit to myself. I might have stopped short at
the discovery of the corpse, but I am no friend to "spurious gospels;"
let our faith, whatever it is, be founded in honest fact. For my part, I
steadfastly believe in ghosts, and have dozens of stories to support
that belief; but this is not among them. Should I ever come, therefore,
to tell you one, pray remember that you have to deal with a candid
narrator.
DEATH OF CROMWELL.
The flowers of autumn, withering fast.
Before the bitter Northern blast;
The earth with hoary frost o'erspread,
And Nature's leafy mantle shed,
Proclaimed abroad through earth and sky
That winter's gloomy reign drew nigh.
And he, whose hand, with mighty stroke,
Oppression's chains had often broke,
Whose patriot heart and fearless voice
Had made oppression's slaves rejoice,
Like autumn's beauty, day by day,
Was passing rapidly away.
Life's spring had brought him hopes and fears,
Its summer many toils and cares;
Autumn had brought him power and fame,
But autumn passed--life's winter came;
And then, like nature, seeking rest,
His head a dying pillow pressed.
A furious storm, with dreadful roar,
Shook Britain's isle from shore to shore,
The raging sea, with thundering sound,
Spread ruin, fear, and death around;
And seem'd to tell throughout the land
Some dire event was near at hand.
Surrounded by the howling blast,
His tide of life was ebbing fast;
But he was calm as evening air,
And raised on high a voice of prayer,
For neither storm nor death's fierce dart
Could shake the faith that nerv'd his heart.
He knew the hand that kept his life
Throughout a long, protracted strife,
Could never fail or know decay,
Though earth itself should pass away;
And as the stormy night rolled on,
His spirit hasted to be gone.
But morning dawn'd at length, and brought
That day's[C] return on which he fought
So often--till the evening sun
Set o'er the mighty victories won:
And darkness, like the warrior's shield,
Spread o'er the bloody battle-field.
That day brought victory no more;
His earthly triumphs then were o'er:
The battle of his life had pass'd,
And Death claim'd Victory at last;
For when the evening shades came down
His wearied spirit thence had flown.
WILLIAM ILOTT.
FOOTNOTES:
[C] 3d September, the anniversary of his greatest victories.
[From Household Words.]
MY WONDERFUL ADVENTURES IN SKITZLAND.
CHAPTER THE FIRST.
THE BEGINNING IS A BORE--I FALL INTO MISFORTUNE.
I am fond of gardening. I like to dig. If among the operations of the
garden any need for such a work can be at any time discovered or
invented, I like to dig a hole. On the third of March, 1848, I began a
hole behind the kitchen wall, whereinto it was originally intended to
transplant a plum-tree. The exercise was so much to my taste, that a
strange humor impelled me to dig on. A fascination held me to the task.
I neglected my business. I disappeared from the earth's surface. A boy
who worked a basket by means of a rope and pulley, aided me; so aided, I
confined my whole attention to spade labor. The centripetal force seemed
to have made me its especial victim. I dug on until autumn. In the
beginning of November I observed that, upon percussion, the sound given
by the floor of my pit was resonant. I did not intermit my labor, urged
as I was by a mysterious instinct downward. On applying my ear, I
occasionally heard a subdued sort of rattle, which caused me to form a
theory that the centre of the earth might be composed of mucus. In
November, the ground broke beneath me into a hollow and I fell a
considerable distance. I alighted on the box-seat of a four-horse coach,
which happened to be running at that time immediately underneath. The
coachman took no notice whatever of my sudden arrival by his side. He
was so completely muffled up, that I could observe only the skillful way
in which he manipulated reins and whip. The horses were yellow. I had
seen no more than this, when the guard's horn blew, and presently we
pulled up at an inn. A waiter came out, and appeared to collect four
bags from the passengers inside the coach. He then came round to me.
"Dine here, sir?"
"Yes, certainly," said I. I like to dine--not the sole point of
resemblance between myself and the great Johnson.
"Trouble you for your stomach, sir."
While the waiter was looking up with a polite stare into my puzzled
face, my neighbor, the coachman, put one hand within his outer coat, as
if to feel for money in his waistcoat-pocket. Directly afterward his
fingers come again to light, and pulled forth an enormous sack.
Notwithstanding that is was abnormally enlarged, I knew by observation
of its form and texture that this was a stomach, with the oesophagus
attached. This, then, the waiter caught as it was thrown down to him,
and hung it carelessly over his arm, together with the four smaller bags
(which I now knew to be also stomachs) collected from the passengers
within the coach. I started up, and as I happened to look round,
observed a skeleton face upon the shoulders of a gentleman who sat
immediately behind my back. My own features were noticed at the same
time by the guard, who now came forward, touching his hat.
"Beg your pardon, sir, but you've been and done it."
"Done what?"
"Why, sir, you should have booked your place, and not come up in this
clandestine way. However, you've been and done it!"
"My good man, what have I done?"
"Why, sir, the Baron Terroro's eyes had the box-seat, and I strongly
suspect you've been and sat upon them."
I looked involuntarily to see whether I had been sitting upon any thing
except the simple cushion. Truly enough, there was an eye, which I had
crushed and flattened.
"Only one," I said.
"Worse for you, and better for him. The other eye had time to escape,
and it will know you again, that's certain. Well, it's no business of
mine. Of course you've no appetite now for dinner? Better pay your fare,
sir. To the Green Hippopotamus and Spectacles, where we put up, it's
ten-and-six."
"Is there room inside?" I inquired. It was advisable to shrink from
observation.
"Yes, sir. The inside passengers are mostly skeleton. There's room for
three, sir. Inside, one-pound-one."
I paid the money, and became an inside passenger.
CHAPTER THE SECOND.
OF DIVISIONS WHICH OCCUR IN SKITZLAND--I AM TAKEN UP
Professor Essig's Lectures on Anatomy had so fortified me, that I did
not shrink from entering the Skitzton coach. It contained living limbs,
loose or attached to skeletons in other respects bare, except that they
were clothed with broadcloth garments, cut after the English fashion.
One passenger only had a complete face of flesh, he had also one living
hand; the other hand I guessed was bony, because it was concealed in a
glove obviously padded. By observing the fit of his clothes, I came to a
conclusion that this gentleman was stuffed throughout; that all his
limbs, except the head and hand, were artificial. Two pairs of Legs, in
woolen stockings, and a pair of Ears, were in a corner of the coach, and
in another corner there were nineteen or twenty Scalps.
I thought it well to look astonished at nothing, and, having pointed in
a careless manner to the scalps, asked what might be their destination?
The person with the Face and Hand replied to me; and although evidently
himself a gentleman, he addressed me with a tone of unconcealed respect.
"They are going to Skitzton, sir, to the hair dresser's."
"Yes, to be sure," I said. "They are to make Natural Skin Wigs. I might
have known."
"I beg your pardon, sir. There is a ball to-morrow night at Culmsey.
But the gentry do not like to employ village barbers, and therefore many
of the better class of people send their hair to Skitzton, and receive
it back by the return coach, properly cut and curled."
"Oh," said I. "Ah! Oh, indeed!"
"Dinners, gentlemen!" said a voice at the window, and the waiter handed
in four stomachs, now tolerably well filled. Each passenger received his
property, and pulling open his chest with as much composure as if he
were unbuttoning his waistcoat, restored his stomach, with a dinner in
it, to the right position. Then the reckonings were paid, and the coach
started.
I thought of my garden, and much wished that somebody could throw
Professor Essig down the hole that I had dug. A few things were to be
met with in Skitzland which would rather puzzle him. They puzzled me;
but I took refuge in silence, and so fortified, protected my ignorance
from an exposure.
"You are going to Court, sir, I presume?" said my Face and Hand friend,
after a short pause. His was the only mouth in the coach, excepting
mine, so that he was the only passenger able to enter into conversation.
"My dear sir," I replied, "let me be frank with you. I have arrived here
unexpectedly out of another world. Of the manners and customs, nay, of
the very nature of the people who inhabit this country, I know nothing.
For any information you can give me, I shall be very grateful."
My friend smiled incredulity, and said,
"Whatever you are pleased to profess, I will believe. What you are
pleased to feign a wish for, I am proud to furnish. In Skitzland, the
inhabitants, until they come of age, retain that illustrious appearance
which you have been so fortunate as never to have lost. During the night
of his twenty-first birthday, each Skitzlander loses the limbs which up
to that period have received from him no care, no education. Of those
neglected parts the skeletons alone remain, but all those organs which
he has employed sufficiently continue unimpaired. I, for example,
devoted to the study of the law, forgot all occupation but to think, to
use my senses, and to write. I rarely used my legs, and therefore Nature
has deprived me of them."
"But," I observed, "it seems that in Skitzland you are able to take
yourselves to pieces."
"No one has that power, sir, more largely than yourself. What organs we
have we can detach on any service. When dispersed, a simple force of
Nature directs all corresponding members whither to fly that they may
re-assemble."
"If they can fly," I asked, "why are they sent in coaches? There were a
pair of eyes on the box seat."
"Simply for safety against accidents. Eyes flying alone are likely to be
seized by birds, and incur many dangers. They are sent, therefore,
usually under protection, like any other valuable parcel."
"Do many accidents occur?"
"Very few. For mutual protection, and also because a single member is
often all that has been left existing of a fellow Skitzlander, our laws,
as you, sir, know much better than myself, estimate the destruction of
any part absent on duty from its skeleton as a crime equivalent to
murder--"
After this I held my tongue. Presently my friend again inquired whether
I was going up to Court?
"Why should I go to Court?"
"Oh, sir, it pleases you to be facetious. You must be aware that any
Skitzlander who has been left by nature in possession of every limb,
sits in the Assembly of the Perfect, or the Upper House, and receives
many state emoluments and dignities."
"Are there many members of that Upper Assembly?"
"Sir, there were forty-two. But if you are now traveling to claim your
seat, the number will be raised to forty-three."
"The Baron Terroro--" I hinted.
"My brother, sir. His eyes are on the box-seat under my care.
Undoubtedly he is a member of the Upper House."
I was now anxious to get out of the coach as soon as possible. My wish
was fulfilled after the next pause. One eye, followed by six pairs of
arms, with strong hard hands belonging to them, flew in at the window. I
was collared; the door was opened, and all hands were at work to drag me
out and away. The twelve hands wisked me through the air, while the one
eye sailed before us, like an old bird, leader of the flight.
CHAPTER THE THIRD.
MY IMPRISONMENT AND TRIAL FOR MURDER.
What sort of sky have they in Skitzland? Our earth overarches them, and,
as the sunlight filters through, it causes a subdued illumination with
very pure rays. Skitzland is situated nearly in the centre of our globe,
it hangs there like a shrunken kernel in the middle of a nutshell. The
height from Skitzland to the over-arching canopy is great; so great,
that if I had not fallen personally from above the firmament, I should
have considered it to be a blue sky similar to ours. At night it is
quite dark; but during the day there is an appearance in the heaven of
white spots; their glistening reminded me of stars. I noticed them as I
was being conveyed to prison by the strong arms of justice, for it was
by a detachment of members from the Skitzton police that I was now
hurried along. The air was very warm, and corroborated the common
observation of an increase of heat as you get into the pith of our
planet. The theory of central fire, however, is, you perceive, quite
overturned by my experience.
We alighted near the outskirts of a large and busy town. Through its
streets I was dragged publicly, much stared at and much staring. The
street life was one busy nightmare of disjointed limbs. Professor Essig,
could he have been dragged through Skitzton, would have delivered his
farewell lecture upon his return. "Gentlemen--Fuit Ilium, Fuit Ischium,
Fuit Sacrum, anatomy has lost her seat among the sciences. My
occupation's gone." Professor Owen's book "On the Nature of Limbs," must
contain, in the next edition, an Appendix "Upon Limbs in Skitzland." I
was dragged through the streets, and all that I saw there, in the
present age of little faith, I dare not tell you. I was dragged through
the streets to prison, and there duly chained, after having been
subjected to the scrutiny of about fifty couples of eyes drawn up in a
line within the prison door. I was chained in a dark cell, a cell so
dark that I could very faintly perceive the figure of some being who was
my companion. Whether this individual had ears wherewith to hear, and
mouth wherewith to answer me, I could not see, but at a venture I
addressed him. My thirst for information was unconquerable; I began,
therefore, immediately with a question:
"Friend, what are those stars which we see shining in the sky at
mid-day?"
An awful groan being an unsatisfactory reply, I asked again.
"Man, do not mock at misery. You will yourself be one of them."
"The teachers shall shine like stars in the firmament." I had a
propensity for teaching, but was puzzled to discover how I could give so
practical an illustration of the text of Fichte.
"Believe me," I said, "I am strangely ignorant. Explain yourself."
He answered with a hollow voice:
"Murderers are shot up out of mortars into the sky, and stick there.
Those white, glistening specks, they are their skeletons."
Justice is prompt in Skitland. I was tried incredibly fast by a jury of
twelve men, who had absolutely heads. The judges had nothing but brain,
mouth, and ear. Three powerful tongues defended me, but as they were not
suffered to talk nonsense, they had little to say. The whole case was
too clear to be talked into cloudiness. Baron Terroro, in person,
deposed that he had sent his eyes to see a friend at Culmsey, and that
they were returning on the Skitzton coach, when I, illegally, came with
my whole bulk upon the box-seat, which he occupied. That one of his eyes
was, in that manner, totally destroyed, but that the other eye, having
escaped, identified me, and brought to his brain intelligence of the
calamity which had befallen. He deposed further, that having received
this information, he dispatched his uncrushed eye with arms from the
police-office, and accompanied with several members of the detective
force to capture the offender, and to procure the full proofs of my
crime. A sub-inspector of Skitzton police then deposed that he sent
three of his faculties, with his mouth, eye, and ear, to meet the coach.
That the driver, consisting only of a stomach and hands, had been
unable to observe what passed. That the guard, on the contrary, had
taxed me with my deed, that he had seen me rise from my seat upon the
murdered eye, and that he had heard me make confession of my guilt. The
guard was brought next into court, and told his tale. Then I was called
upon for my defense. If a man wearing a cloth coat and trowsers, and
talking excellent English, were to plead at the Old Bailey that he had
broken into some citizen's premises accidentally by falling from the
moon, his tale would be received in London as mine was in Skitzton. I
was severely reprimanded for my levity, and ordered to be silent. The
judge summed up, and the jury found me guilty. The judge, who had put on
the black cap before the verdict was pronounced, held out no hope of
mercy, and straightway sentenced me to death, according to the laws and
usage of the realm.
CHAPTER THE FOURTH.
THE LAST HOURS OF THE CONDEMNED IN SKITZLAND--I AM EXECUTED.
The period which intervenes between the sentence and execution of a
criminal in Skitzland, is not longer than three hours. In order to
increase the terror of death by contrast, the condemned man is suffered
to taste at the table of life from which he is banished, the most
luscious viands. All the attainable enjoyment that his wit can ask for,
he is allowed to have, during the three hours before he is shot like
rubbish off the fields of Skitzland.
Under guard, of course, I was now to be led whithersoever I desired.
Several churches were open. They never are all shut in Skitzton. I was
taken into one. A man with heart and life was preaching. People with
hearts were in some pews; people with brains, in others; people with
ears only, in some. In a neighboring church, there was a popular
preacher, a skeleton with life. His congregation was a crowd of ears,
and nothing more.
There was a day-performance at the Opera I went to that. Fine lungs and
mouths possessed the stage, and afterward there was a great bewilderment
with legs. I was surprised to notice that many of the most beautiful
ladies were carried in and out, and lifted about like dolls. My guides
sneered at my pretense of ignorance, when I asked why this was. But they
were bound to please me in all practicable ways, so they informed me,
although somewhat pettishly. It seems that in Skitzland, ladies who
possess and have cultivated only their good looks, lose at the age of
twenty-one all other endowments. So they become literally dolls, but
dolls of a superior kind; for they can not only open and shut their
eyes, but also sigh; wag slowly with their heads, and sometimes take a
pocket handkerchief out of a bag, and drop it. But as their limbs are
powerless, they have to be lifted and dragged about after the fashion
that excited my astonishment.
I said then, "Let me see the poor." They took me to a Workhouse. The
men, there, were all yellow; and they wore a dress which looked as
though it were composed of asphalte; it also had a smell like that of
pitch. I asked for explanation of these things.
A Superintendent of Police remarked that I was losing opportunities of
real enjoyment for the idle purpose of persisting in my fable of having
dropped down from the sky. However, I compelled him to explain to me
what was the reason of these things. The information I obtained was
briefly this: that Nature, in Skitzland, never removes the stomach.
Every man has to feed himself; and the necessity for finding food,
joined to the necessity for buying clothes, is a mainspring whereby the
whole clockwork of civilized life is kept in motion. Now, if a man
positively can not feed and clothe himself, he becomes a pauper. He then
goes to the Workhouse, where he has his stomach filled with a cement.
That stopping lasts a life-time, and he thereafter needs no food. His
body, however, becomes yellow by the superfluity of bile. The
yellow-boy, which is the Skitzland epithet for pauper, is at the same
time provided with a suit of clothes. The clothes are of a material so
tough that they can be worn unrepaired for more than eighty years. The
pauper is now freed from care, but were he in this state cast loose upon
society, since he has not that stimulus to labor which excites industry
in other men, he would become an element of danger in the state. Nature
no longer compelling him to work, the law compels him. The remainder of
his life is forfeit to the uses of his country. He labors at the
workhouse, costing nothing more than the expense of lodging, after the
first inconsiderable outlay for cement wherewith to plug his stomach,
and for the one suit of apparel.
When we came out of the workhouse, all the bells in the town were
tolling. The superintendent told me that I had sadly frittered away
time, for I had now no more than half an hour to live. Upon that I
leaned my back against a post, and asked him to prepare me for my part
in the impending ceremony by giving me a little information on the
subject of executions.
I found that it was usual for a man to be executed with great ceremony
upon the spot whereon his crime had been committed. That in case of
rebellions or tumults in the provinces, when large numbers were not
unfrequently condemned to death, the sentence of the law was carried out
in the chief towns of the disturbed districts. That large numbers of
people were thus sometimes discharged from a single market-place, and
that the repeated strokes appeared to shake, or crack, or pierce in some
degree that portion of the sky toward which the artillery had been
directed. I here at once saw that I had discovered the true cause of
earthquakes and volcanoes; and this shows how great light may be thrown
upon theories concerning the hidden constitution of this earth, by going
more deeply into the matter of it than had been done by any one before I
dug my hole. Our volcanoes, it is now proved, are situated over the
market-places of various provincial towns in Skitzland. When a
revolution happens, the rebels are shot up--discharged from mortars by
means of an explosive material evidently far more powerful than our
gun-powder or gun-cotton; and they are pulverized by the friction in
grinding their way through the earth. How simple and easy truth appears,
when we have once arrived at it.
The sound of muffled drums approached us, and a long procession turned
the corner of a street. I was placed in the middle of it--Baron Terroro
by my side. All then began to float so rapidly away, that I was nearly
left alone, when forty arms came back and collared me. It was considered
to be a proof of my refractory disposition, that I would make no use of
my innate power, of flight. I was therefore dragged in this procession
swiftly through the air, drums playing, fifes lamenting.
We alighted on the spot where I had fallen, and the hole through which I
had come I saw above me. It was very small, but the light from above
shining more vividly through it made it look, with its rough edges, like
a crumpled moon. A quantity of some explosive liquid was poured into a
large mortar, which had been erected (under the eye of Baron Terroro)
exactly where my misfortune happened. I was then thrust in, the baron
ramming me down, and pounding with a long stock or pestle upon my head
in a noticeably vicious manner. The baron then cried "Fire!" and as I
shot out, in the midst of a blaze, I saw him looking upward.
CHAPTER THE FIFTH.
MY REVENGE ON THE SKITZLANDERS.
By great good fortune, they had planted their artillery so well, that I
was fired up through my hole again, and alighted in my own garden, just
a little singed. My first thought was to run to an adjoining bed of
vegetable marrows. Thirty vegetable marrows and two pumpkins I rained
down to astonish the Skitzlanders, and I fervently hope that one of them
may have knocked out the remaining eye of my vindictive enemy, the
baron. I then went into the pantry, and obtained a basket full of eggs,
and having rained these down upon the Skitzlanders, I left them.
It was after breakfast when I went down to Skitzland, and I came back
while the dinner bell was ringing.
[From the People's Journal.]
CHARLOTTE CORDAY.
Perhaps the event that lingers longest in the memory, among all the
appalling episodes and startling passages of the French Revolution, is
the assassination of the tyrant Marat, by Charlotte Corday. With the
blood of old Corneille running in her veins, and possessing something of
his stern and masculine love of liberty, this simple child of nature
hears in her distant home that her friends, the Girondists, are
proscribed, and that a hated triumvirate in Paris, tramples on the
feelings and liberties of the people. Full of one idea, she purchases a
knife, and, without a single confidant, sets out for the metropolis,
where, procuring an interview with Marat, she stabs him to the heart,
and with one blow accomplishes her revenge, and what she vainly supposed
to be the people's redemption.
In Miss Julia Kavanagh's charming volumes she gives us a pretty faithful
memoir of this extraordinary woman. Among the women of the French
Revolution, there is one, says the gifted authoress, who stands
essentially apart: a solitary episode of the eventful story. She appears
for a moment, performs a deed--heroic as to the intention, criminal as
to the means--and disappears forever; lost in the shadow of time--an
unfathomed mystery.
The greatest portion of the youth of Charlotte Corday--to give her the
name by which she is generally known--was spent in the calm obscurity of
her convent solitude. Many high visions, many burning dreams and lofty
aspirations, already haunted her imaginative and enthusiastic mind, as
she slowly paced the silent cloisters, or rested, lost in thought,
beneath the shadow of the ancient elms. It is said that, like Madame
Roland, she contemplated secluding herself for ever from the world in
her monastic retreat; but, affected by the skepticism of the age, which
penetrated even beyond convent walls, she gave up the project....
All the austerity and republican enthusiasm of her illustrious ancestor,
Pierre Corneille, seemed to have come down to his young descendant. Even
Rousseau and Raynal, the apostles of democracy, had no pages that could
absorb her so deeply as those of ancient history, with its stirring
deeds and immortal recollections. Often, like Manon Philipon in the
recess of her father's workshop, might Charlotte Corday be seen in her
convent cell, thoughtfully bending over an open volume of Plutarch, that
powerful and eloquent historian of all heroic sacrifices.
When the Abbaye aux Dames was closed, in consequence of the Revolution,
Charlotte was in her twentieth year, in the prime of life, and of
wonderful beauty; and never, perhaps, did a vision of more dazzling
loveliness step forth from beneath the dark convent portal into the
light of the free and open world. She was rather tall, but admirably
proportioned, with a figure full of native grace and dignity: her
hands, arms, and shoulders were models of pure sculptural beauty. An
expression of singular gentleness and serenity characterized her fair,
oval countenance and regular features. Her open forehead, dark and
well-arched eyebrows, and eyes of a gray so deep that it was often
mistaken for blue, added to her natural grave and meditative appearance;
her nose was straight and well formed, her mouth serious but exquisitely
beautiful.
On leaving the convent in which she had been educated, Charlotte Corday
went to reside with her aunt, Madame Coutellier de Bretteville Gouville,
an old royalist lady, who inhabited an ancient-looking house in one of
the principal streets of Caën. There the young girl, who had inherited a
little property, spent several years, chiefly engaged in watching the
progress of the Revolution.
A silent reserve characterized this epoch of Charlotte Corday's life;
her enthusiasm was not external but inward; she listened to the
discussions which were carried on around her without taking a part in
them herself. She seemed to feel instinctively that great thoughts are
always better nursed in the heart's solitude: that they can only lose
their native depth and intensity by being revealed too freely before the
indifferent gaze of the world. Those with whom she then occasionally
conversed took little heed of the substance of her discourse, and could
remember nothing of it when she afterward became celebrated; but all
recollected well her voice, and spoke with strange enthusiasm of its
pure, silvery sound.
The fall of the Girondists, on the 31st of May, first suggested to
Charlotte Corday the possibility of giving an active shape to her
hitherto passive feelings. She watched with intense, though still silent
interest, the progress of events, concealing her secret indignation and
thoughts of vengeance under her habitually calm aspect. Those feelings
were heightened in her soul by the presence of the fugitive Girondists,
who had found a refuge in Caën, and were urging the Normans to raise an
army to march on Paris. She found a pretense to call upon Barbaroux,
then with his friends at the Intendance. She came twice, accompanied by
an old servant, and protected by her own modest dignity. Péthion saw her
in the hall, where she was waiting for the handsome Girondist, and
observed with a smile, "So the beautiful aristocrat is come to see
republicans." "Citizen Péthion," she replied, "you now judge me without
knowing me, but a time will come when you shall learn who I am." With
Barbaroux, Charlotte chiefly conversed of the imprisoned Girondists; of
Madame Roland and Marat. The name of this man had long haunted her with
a mingled feeling of dread and horror. To Marat she ascribed the
proscription of the Girondists, the woes of the Republic, and on him she
resolved to avenge her ill-fated country. Charlotte was not aware that
Marat was but the tool of Danton and Robespierre. "If such actions
could be counseled," afterward said Barbaroux, "it is not Marat whom we
would have advised her to strike."
While this deadly thought was daily strengthening itself in Charlotte's
mind, she received several offers of marriage. She declined them, on the
plea of wishing to remain free: but strange indeed must have seemed to
her, at that moment, those proposals of earthly love. One of those whom
her beauty had enamored, M. de Franquelin, a young volunteer in the
cause of the Girondists, died of grief on learning her fate; his last
request was, that her portrait, and a few letters he had formerly
received from her, might be buried with him in his grave.
For several days after her last interview with Barbaroux, Charlotte
brooded silently over her great thought; often meditating on the history
of Judith. Her aunt subsequently remembered that, on entering her room
one morning, she found an old Bible open on her bed: the verse in which
it is recorded that "the Lord had gifted Judith with a special beauty
and fairness," for the deliverance of Israel, was underlined with a
pencil.
On another occasion Madame de Bretteville found her niece weeping alone;
she inquired into the cause of her tears. "They flow," replied
Charlotte, "for the misfortunes of my country." Heroic and devoted as
she was, she then also wept, perchance, over her own youth and beauty,
so soon to be sacrificed forever. No personal considerations altered her
resolve: she procured a passport, provided herself with money, and paid
a farewell visit to her father, to inform him that, considering the
unsettled condition of France, she thought it best to retire to England.
He approved of her intention, and bade her adieu. On returning to Caën,
Charlotte told the same tale to Madame de Bretteville, left a secret
provision for an old nurse, and distributed the little property she
possessed among her friends.
It was on the morning of the 9th of July, 1793, that she left the house
of her aunt, without trusting herself with a last farewell. Her most
earnest wish was, when her deed should have been accomplished, to
perish, wholly unknown, by the hands of an infuriated multitude. The
woman who could contemplate such a fate, and calmly devote herself to
it, without one selfish thought of future renown, had indeed the heroic
soul of a martyr.
Her journey to Paris was marked by no other event than the unwelcome
attentions of some Jacobins with whom she traveled. One of them, struck
by her modest and gentle beauty, made her a very serious proposal of
marriage: she playfully evaded his request, but promised that he should
learn who and what she was at some future period. On entering Paris, she
proceeded immediately to the Hotel de la Providence, Rue ties Vieux
Augustins, not far from Marat's dwelling. Here she rested for two days
before calling on her intended victim. Nothing can mark more forcibly
the singular calmness of her mind: she felt no hurry to accomplish the
deed for which she had journeyed so far, and over which she had
meditated so deeply: her soul remained serene and undaunted to the last.
The room which she occupied, and which has often been pointed out to
inquiring strangers, was a dark and wretched attic, into which light
scarcely ever penetrated. There she read again the volume of Plutarch
she had brought with her--unwilling to part from her favorite author,
even in her last hours--and probably composed that energetic address to
the people which was found upon her after her apprehension.
Charlotte perceived that to call on Marat was the only means by which
she might accomplish her purpose. She did so on the morning of the 13th
of July, having first purchased a knife in the Palais Royal, and written
him a note, in which she requested an interview. She was refused
admittance. She then wrote him a second note, more pressing than the
first, and in which she represented herself as persecuted for the cause
of freedom. Without waiting to see what effect this note might produce,
she called again at half-past seven the same evening.
Marat then resided in the Rue des Cordeliers, in a gloomy-looking house,
which has since been demolished. His constant fears of assassination
were shared by those around him; the porter seeing a strange woman pass
by his lodge, without pausing to make any inquiry, ran out and called
her back. She did not heed his remonstrance, but swiftly ascended the
old stone staircase, until she had reached the door of Marat's
apartment. It was cautiously opened by Albertine, a woman with whom
Marat cohabited, and who passed for his wife. Recognizing the same young
and handsome girl who had already called on her husband, and animated,
perhaps by a feeling of jealous mistrust, Albertine refused to admit
her; Charlotte insisted with great earnestness. The sound of their
altercation reached Marat: he immediately ordered his wife to admit the
stranger, whom he recognized as the author of the two letters he had
received in the course of the day. Albertine obeyed reluctantly; she
allowed Charlotte to enter; and after crossing with her an ante chamber,
where she had been occupied with a man named Laurent Basse in folding
some numbers of the "Ami du Peuple," she ushered her through two other
rooms, until they came to a narrow closet where Marat was then in a
bath. He gave a look at Charlotte, and ordered his wife to leave them
alone: she complied, but allowed the door of the closet to remain half
open, and kept within call.
According to his usual custom, Marat wore a soiled handkerchief bound
round his head, increasing his natural hideousness. A coarse covering
was thrown across the bath; a board, likewise, placed transversely,
supported his papers. Laying down his pen, he asked Charlotte the
purport of her visit. The closet was so narrow that she touched the bath
near which she stood. She gazed on him with ill-disguised horror and
disgust, but answered as composedly as she could, that she had come from
Caën, in order to give him correct intelligence concerning the
proceedings of the Girondists there. He listened, questioned her
eagerly, wrote down the names of the Girondists, then added, with a
smile of triumph: "Before a week they shall have perished on the
guillotine." "These words," afterward said Charlotte, "sealed his fate."
Drawing from beneath the handkerchief which covered her bosom the knife
she had kept there all along, she plunged it to the hilt in Marat's
heart. He gave one loud, expiring cry for help, and sank back dead, in
the bath. By an instinctive impulse, Charlotte had instantly drawn out
the knife from the breast of her victim, but she did not strike again;
casting it down at his feet, she left the closet, and sat down in the
neighboring room, thoughtfully passing her hand across her brow: her
task was done.
The wife of Marat had rushed to his aid on hearing his cry for help.
Laurent Basse, seeing that all was over, turned round toward Charlotte,
and, with a blow of a chair, felled her to the floor; while the
infuriated Albertine trampled her under her feet. The tumult aroused the
other tenants of the house; the alarm spread, and a crowd gathered in
the apartment, who learned with stupor that Marat, the Friend of the
People, had been murdered. Deeper still was their wonder when they gazed
on the murderess. She stood there before them with still disordered
garments, and her disheveled hair, loosely bound by a broad green ribbon
falling around her; but so calm, so serenely lovely, that those who most
abhorred her crime gazed on her with involuntary admiration. "Was she
then so beautiful?" was the question addressed, many years afterward, to
an old man, one of the few remaining witnesses of this scene.
"Beautiful!" he echoed, enthusiastically; adding, with the eternal
regrets of old age: "Ay, there are none such now!"
On the morning of the 17th, she was led before her judges. She was
dressed with care, and had never looked more lovely. Her bearing was so
imposing and dignified, that the spectators and the judges seemed to
stand arraigned before her. She interrupted the first witness, by
declaring that it was she who had killed Marat. "Who inspired you with
so much hatred against him?" asked the President.
"I needed not the hatred of others, I had enough of my own," she
energetically replied; "besides, we do not execute well that which we
have not ourselves conceived."
"What, then, did you hate in Marat?"
"His crimes."
"Do you think that you have assassinated all the Marats?"
"No; but now that he is dead, the rest may fear."
She answered other questions with equal firmness and laconism. Her
project, she declared, had been formed since the 31st of May. "She had
killed one man to save a hundred thousand She was a republican long
before the Revolution, and had never failed in energy."
"What do you understand by energy?" asked the President.
"That feeling," she replied, "which induces us to east aside selfish
considerations, and sacrifice ourselves for our country."
Fouquier Tinville here observed, alluding to the sure blow she had
given, that she must be well practiced in crime. "The monster takes me
for an assassin!" she exclaimed, in a tone thrilling with indignation.
This closed the debates, and her defender rose. It was not Doulcet de
Pontécoulant--who had not received her letter--but Chauveau de la Garde,
chosen by the President. Charlotte gave him an anxious look, as though
she feared he might seek to save her at the expense of honor. He spoke,
and she perceived that her apprehensions were unfounded. Without
excusing her crime, or attributing it to insanity, he pleaded for the
fervor of her conviction; which he had the courage to call sublime. The
appeal proved unavailing. Charlotte Corday was condemned. Without
deigning to answer the President, who asked her if she had aught to
object to the penalty of death being carried out against her, she rose,
and walking up to her defender, thanked him gracefully. "These
gentlemen," said she, pointing to the judges, "have just informed me
that the whole of my property is confiscated. I owe something in the
prison: as a proof of my friendship and esteem, I request you to pay
this little debt."
On returning to the conciergerie, she found an artist, named Hauër,
waiting for her, to finish her portrait, which he had begun at the
tribunal. They conversed freely together, until the executioner,
carrying the red chemise destined for assassins, and the scissors with
which he was to cut her hair off, made his appearance. "What, so soon!"
exclaimed Charlotte Corday, slightly turning pale; but rallying her
courage, she resumed her composure, and presented a look of her hair to
M. Hauër, as the only reward in her power to offer. A priest came to
offer her his ministry. She thanked him and the persons by whom he had
been sent, but declined his spiritual aid. The executioner cut her hair,
bound her hands, and threw the red chemise over her. M. Hauër was struck
with the almost unearthly loveliness which the crimson hue of this
garment imparted to the ill-fated maiden. "This toilet of death, though
performed by rude hands, leads to immortality," said Charlotte, with a
smile.
A heavy storm broke forth as the car of the condemned left the
conciergerie for the Place de la Revolution. An immense crowd lined
every street through which Charlotte Corday passed. Hootings and
execrations at first rose on her path; but as her pure and serene beauty
dawned on the multitude, as the exquisite loveliness of her countenance
and the sculptural beauty of her figure became more fully revealed,
pity and admiration superseded every other feeling. Her bearing was so
admirably calm and dignified, as to rouse sympathy in the breasts of
those who detested not only her crime, but the cause for which it had
been committed. Many men of every party took off their hats and bowed as
the cart passed before them. Among those who waited its approach, was a
young German, normed Adam Luz, who stood at the entrance of the Rue
Saint Honoré, and followed Charlotte to the scaffold. He gazed on the
lovely and heroic maiden with all the enthusiasm of his imaginative
race. A love, unexampled perhaps in the history of the human heart, took
possession of his soul.
Unconscious of the passionate love she had awakened, Charlotte now stood
near the guillotine. She turned pale on first beholding it, but soon
resumed her serenity. A deep blush suffused her face when the
executioner removed the handkerchief that covered her neck and
shoulders, but she calmly laid her head upon the block. The executioner
touched a spring and the ax came down. One of Samson's assistants
immediately stepped forward, and holding up the lifeless head to the
gaze of the crowd, struck it on either cheek. The brutal act only
excited a feeling of horror; and it is said that--as though even in
death her indignant spirit protested against this outrage--an angry and
crimson flush passed over the features of Charlotte Corday.
[From Household Words.]
GREENWICH WEATHER-WISDOM.
In England every body notices the weather, and talks about the weather,
and suffers by the weather, yet very few of us _know_ any thing about
it. The changes of our climate have given us a constant and an
insatiable national disease--consumption; the density of our winter fog
has gained an European celebrity; while the general haziness of our
atmosphere induces an Italian or an American to doubt whether we are
ever indulged with a real blue sky. "Good day" has become the national
salutation; umbrellas, water-proof clothes, and cough mixtures are
almost necessities of English life; yet, despite these daily and hourly
proofs of the importance of the weather to each and all of us, it is
only within the last ten years that any effectual steps have been taken
in England to watch the weather and the proximate elements which
regulate its course and variations.
Yet, in those ten years positive wonders have been done, and good hope
established that a continuance of patient inquiry will be rewarded by
still further discoveries. To take a single result, it may be mentioned,
that a careful study of the thermometer has shown that a descent of the
temperature of London from forty-five to thirty-two degrees, generally
kills about 300 persons. They may not all die in the very week when the
loss of warmth takes place, but the number of deaths is found to
increase to that extent over the previous average within a short period
after the change. The fall of temperature, in truth, kills them as
certainly as a well-aimed cannon-shot. Our changing climate, or
deficient food and shelter, has prepared them for the final stroke, but
they actually die at last of the weather.
Before 1838, several European states, less apt than ourselves to talk
about the weather, had taken it up as a study, and had made various
contributions to the general knowledge of the subject; but in that year
England began to act. The officials who now and then emerge from the
Admiralty under the title of the "Board of Visitors," to see what is in
progress at the Greenwich Observatory, were reminded by Mr. Airy, the
astronomer royal, that much good might be done by pursuing a course of
magnetic and meteorological observations. The officials "listened and
believed."
The following year saw a wooden fence pushed out behind the Observatory
walls, in the direction of Blackheath, and soon afterward a few
low-roofed, unpainted, wooden buildings were dotted over the inclosure.
These structures are small enough and humble enough to outward view, yet
they contain some most beautifully-constructed instruments, and have
been the scene of a series of observations and discoveries of the
greatest interest and value. The stray holiday visitor to Greenwich
Park, who feels tempted to look over the wooden paling, sees only a
series of deal sheds, upon a rough grass-plat; a mast some eighty feet
high, steadied by ropes, and having a lantern at the top, and a windlass
below; and if he looks closer, he perceives a small inner inclosure,
surrounded by a dwarf fence; an upright stand, with a movable top,
sheltering a collection of thermometers; and here and there a pile of
planks and unused partitioning, that helps to give the place an
appearance of temporary expediency, an aspect something between a
collection of emigrants' cottages and the yard of a dealer in
second-hand building materials. But--as was said when speaking of the
Astronomical Observatory--Greenwich is a practical place, and not one
prepared for show. Science, like virtue, does not require a palace for a
dwelling-place. In this collection of deal houses, during the last ten
years, Nature has been constantly watched, and interrogated with the
zeal and patience which alone can glean a knowledge of her secrets. And
the results of those watches, kept at all hours, and in all weathers,
are curious in the extreme; but before we ask what they are, let us
cross the barrier, and see with what tools the weather-students work.
The main building is built in the form of a cross, with its chief front
to the magnetic north. It is formed of wood, all iron and other metals
being carefully excluded; for its purpose is to contain three large
magnets, which have to be isolated from all influence likely to
interfere with their truthful action. In three arms of the cross these
magnets are suspended by bands of unwrought, untwisted silk. In the
fourth arm is a sort of double window, filled with apparatus for
receiving the electricity collected at the top of the mast which stands
close by. Thus, in this wooden shed, we find one portion devoted to;
electricity--to the detection and registry of the stray lightning of the
atmosphere--and the other three to a set of instruments that feel the
influence and register the variations of the magnetic changes in the
conditions of the air. "True as the needle to the pole," is the burden
of an old song, which now shows how little our forefathers knew about
this same needle, which, in truth, has a much steadier character than it
deserves. Let all who still have faith in the legend go to the
magnet-house, and when they have seen the vagaries there displayed, they
will have but a poor idea of Mr. Charles Dibdin's sea-heroes, whose
constancy is declared to have been as true as their compasses were to
the north.
Upon entering the magnet-house, the first object that attracts attention
are the jars to which the electricity is brought down. The fluid is
collected, as just stated, by a conductor running from the top of the
mast outside. In order that not the slightest portion may be lost in its
progress down, a lamp is kept constantly burning near the top of the
pole, the light of which keeps warm and dry a body of glass that cuts
off all communication between the conductor and the machinery which
supports it. Another light, for the purpose of collecting the
electricity by its flame, is placed above the top of the pole. This
light, burning at night, has given rise to many a strange supposition in
the neighborhood. It is too high up to be serviceable as a lantern to
those below. Besides, who walks in Greenwich Park after the gates are
closed? It can light only the birds or the deer. "Then, surely," says
another popular legend, "it is to guide the ships on the river, when on
their way up at night; a sort of landmark to tell where-abouts the
Observatory is when the moon and stars are clouded, and refuse to show
where their watchers are."
All these speculations are idle, for the lights burn when the sun is
shining, as well as at night; and the object of the lower one is that no
trace of moisture, and no approach of cold, shall give the electricity a
chance of slipping down the mast, or the ropes, to the earth, but shall
leave it no way of escape from the wise men below, who want it, and will
have it, whether it likes or no, in their jars, that they may measure
its quantity and its quality, and write both down in their journals. It
is thus that electricity comes down the wires into those jars on our
right as we enter. If very slight, its presence there is indicated by
tiny morsels of pendent gold-leaf; if stronger, the divergence of two
straws show it; if stronger still, the third jar holds its greater
force, while neighboring instruments measure the length of the electric
sparks, or mark the amount of the electric force. At the desk, close by,
sits the observer, who jots down the successive indications. In his
book he registers from day to day, throughout the year, how much
electricity has been in the air, and what was its character, even to
such particulars as to whether its sparks were blue, violet, or purple
in color. At times, however, he has to exercise great care, and it is
not always that he even then escapes receiving severe shocks.
Passing on, we approach the magnets. They are three in number; of large
size, and differently suspended, to show the various ways in which such
bodies are acted upon. All hang by bands of unwrought silk. If the silk
were twisted, it would twist the magnets, and the accuracy of their
position would be disturbed. Magnets, like telescopes, must be true in
their adjustment to the hundredth part of a hair's breadth. One magnet
hangs north and south; another east and west; and a third, like a
scale-beam, is balanced on knife-edges and agate planes, so beautifully,
that when once adjusted and inclosed in its case, it is opened only once
a year, lest one grain of dust, or one small spider, should destroy its
truth; for spiders are as troublesome to the weather-student as to the
astronomer. These insects like the perfect quiet that reigns about the
instruments of the philosopher, and with heroic perseverance persist in
spinning their fine threads among his machines. Indeed, spiders
occasionally betray the magnetic observer into very odd behavior At
times he may be seen bowing in the sunshine, like a Persian
fire-worshiper; now stooping in this direction, now dodging in that, but
always gazing through the sun's rays up toward that luminary. He seems
demented, staring at nothing. At last he lifts his hand; he snatches
apparently at vacancy to pull nothing down In truth his eye had at last
caught the gleam of light reflected from an almost invisible spider line
running from the electrical wire to the neighboring planks. The spider
who had ventured on the charged wire paid the penalty of such daring
with his life long ago, but he had left his web behind him, and that
beautifully minute thread has been carrying off to the earth a portion
of the electric fluid, before it had been received, and tested, and
registered by the mechanism below. Such facts show the exceeding
delicacy of the observations.
For seven years, the magnets suspended in this building were constantly
watched every two hours--every even hour--day and night, except on
Sundays, the object being that some light might be thrown upon the laws
regulating the movements of the mariner's compass; hence, that while men
became wiser, navigation might be rendered safer. The chief
observer--the _genius loci_--is Mr. Glaisher, whose name figures in the
reports of the Register-General. He, with two assistants, from year to
year, went on making these tedious examinations of the variations of the
magnets, by means of small telescopes, fixed with great precision upon
pedestals of masonry or wood fixed on the earth, and unconnected with
the floor of the building, occupying a position exactly between the
three magnets. This mode of proceeding had continued for some years with
almost unerring regularity, and certain large quarto volumes full of
figures were the results, when an ingenious medical man, Mr. Brooke, hit
upon a photographic plan for removing the necessity for this perpetual
watchfulness. Now, in the magnet-house, we see light and chemistry doing
the tasks before performed by human labor; and doing them more
faithfully than even the most vigilant of human eyes and hands. Around
the magnets are cases of zinc, so perfect that they exclude all light
from without. Inside those cases, in one place, is a lamp giving a
single ray of prepared light, which, falling upon a mirror soldered to
the magnet, moves with its motions. This wandering ray, directed toward
a sheet of sensitive photographic paper, records the magnet's slightest
motion! The paper moves on by clock-work, and once in four-and-twenty
hours an assistant, having closed the shutters of the building, lights a
lantern of _yellow glass_, opens the magnet-boxes, removes the paper on
which the magnets have been enabled to record their own motions, and
then, having put in a fresh sheet of sensitive paper, he shuts it
securely in, winds up the clock-work, puts out his yellow light, and
lets in the sunshine. His lantern glass is yellow, because the yellow
rays are the only ones which can be safely allowed to fall upon the
photographic paper during its removal from the instrument, to the dish
in which its magnetic picture is to be _fixed_ by a further chemical
process. It is the blue ray of the light that gives the daguerrotypic
likeness--as most persons who have had their heads off, under the hands
of M. Claudet, or Mr. Beard, or any of their numerous competitors in the
art of preparing sun-pictures, well know.
Since the apparatus of Mr. Brooke for the self-registration of the
magnetic changes has been in operation at Greenwich, the time of Mr.
Glaisher and his assistants has been more at liberty for other branches
of their duties. These are numerous enough. Thermometers and barometers
have to be watched as well as magnets. To these instruments the same
ingenious photographic contrivance is applied.
The wooden building next to the magnet-house on the southwest contains a
modification of Mr. Brooke's ingenious plan, by which the rise and fall
of the temperature of the air is self-registered. Outside the building
are the bulbs of thermometers freely exposed to the weather. Their
shafts run through a zinc case, and as the mercury rises or falls, it
moves a float having a projecting arm. Across this arm is thrown the ray
of prepared light which falls then upon the sensitive paper. Thus we see
the variations of the needle and the variations in heat and cold both
recording their own story, within these humble-looking wooden sheds, as
completely as the wind and the rain are made to do the same thing, on
the top of the towers of the Observatory. The reward given to the
inventor of this ingenious mode of self-registration has been recently
revealed in a parliamentary paper, thus: "To Mr. Charles Brooke for his
invention and establishment at the Royal Observatory, of the apparatus
for the self-registration of magnetical and meteorological phenomena,
£500." Every year the invention will save fully £500 worth of human
toil; and the reward seems small when we see every year millions voted
for warlike, sinecure, and other worse than useless purposes.
Photography, however, can not do all the work. Its records have to be
cheeked by independent observations every day, and then both have to be
brought to their practical value by comparison with certain tables which
test their accuracy, and make them available for disclosing certain
scientific results. The preparation of such tables is one of the
practical triumphs of Greenwich. Many a quiet country gentleman amuses
his leisure by noting day by day the variations of his thermometer and
barometer. Heretofore such observations were isolated and of no general
value, but now, by the tables completed by Mr. Glaisher, and published
by the Royal Society, they may all be converted into scientific values,
and be made available for the increase of our weather-wisdom. For nearly
seventy years the Royal Society had observations made at Somerset House,
but they were a dead letter--mere long columns of figures--till these
tables gave them significance. And the same tables now knit into one
scientific whole, the observations taken by forty scientific volunteers,
who, from day to day, record for the Registrar-General of births and
deaths, the temperature, moisture, &c., of their different localities,
which vary from Glasgow to Guernsey, and from Cornwall to Norwich.
What the Rosetta stone is to the history of the Pharaohs, these
Greenwich tables have been to the weather-hieroglyphics. They have
afforded something like a key to the language in which the secrets are
written; and it remains for industrious observation and scientific zeal
to complete the modern victory over ancient ignorance. Already the
results of the Greenwich studies of the weather have given us a number
of curious morsels of knowledge. The wholesale destruction of human life
induced by a fall in the temperature of London has just been noticed.
Besides the manifestation of that fact, we are shown, that instead of a
warm summer being followed by a cold winter, the tendency of the law of
the weather is to group warm seasons together, and cold seasons
together. Mr. Glaisher has made out, that the character of the weather
seems to follow certain curves, so to speak, each extending over periods
of fifteen years. During the first half of each of these periods, the
seasons become warmer and warmer, till they reach their warmest point,
and then they sink again, becoming colder and colder, till they reach
the lowest point, whence they rise again. His tables range over the
last seventy-nine years--from 1771 to 1849. Periods shown to be the
coldest, were years memorable for high-priced food, increased mortality,
popular discontent, and political changes. In his diagrams, the warm
years are tinted brown, and the cold years gray, and as the sheets are
turned over and the dates scanned, the fact suggest itself that a gray
period saw Lord George Gordon's riots; a gray period was marked by the
Reform Bill excitement; and a gray period saw the Corn Laws repealed.
A few more morsels culled from the experience of these weather-seers,
and we have done.
Those seasons have been best which have enjoyed an average
temperature--not too hot nor too cold.
The indications are that the climate of England is becoming warmer, and,
consequently, healthier; a fact to be partly accounted for by the
improved drainage and the removal of an excess of timber from the land.
The intensity of cholera was found greatest in those places where the
air was stagnant; and, therefore, any means for causing its motion, as
lighting fires and improving ventilation, are thus proved to be of the
utmost consequence.
Some day near the 20th of January--the lucky guess, in 1838, of Murphy's
Weather Almanac--will, upon the average of years, be found to be the
coldest of the whole year.
In the middle of May there are generally some days of cold, so severe as
to be unexplainable. Humboldt mentions this fact in his Cosmos; and
various authors have tried to account for it--at present in vain. The
favorite notion, perhaps, is that which attributes this period of cold
to the loosening of the icebergs of the north. Another weather
eccentricity is the usual advent of some warm days at the beginning of
November.
Certain experiments in progress to test the difference between the
temperature of the Thames, and of the surrounding atmosphere, are
expected to show the cause of the famous London fog. During the night
the Thames is often from ten to seventeen degrees warmer, and in the day
time from eight to ten degrees colder than the air above it.
If the theory of weather-cycles holds good, we are to have seasons
colder than the average from this time till 1853, when warmth will begin
again to predominate over cold. A chilly prophecy this to close with,
and therefore, rather let an anecdote complete this chapter on the
Weather-Watchers of Greenwich.
Among other experiments going on some time ago in the observatory
inclosure, were some by which Mr. Glaisher sought to discover how much
warmth the earth lost during the hours of night, and how much moisture
the air would take up in a day from a given surface. Upon the long
grass, within the dwarf fence already mentioned were placed all sorts of
odd substances, in little distinct qualities. Ashes wood, leather,
linen, cotton, glass, lead, copper and stone, among other things, were
there to show how each affected the question of radiation. Close by upon
a post was a dish six inches across, in which every day there was
punctually poured one ounce of water, and at the same hour next day, as
punctually was this fluid remeasured to see what had been lost by
evaporation. For three years this latter experiment had been going on,
and the results were posted up in a book; but the figures gave most
contradictory results. There was either something very irregular in the
air, or something very wrong in the apparatus. It was watched for
leakage, but none was found, when one day Mr. Glaisher stepped out of
the magnet-house, and looking toward the stand, the mystery was
revealed. The evaporating dish of the philosopher was being used as a
bath by an irreverent bird! a sparrow was scattering from his wings the
water left to be drunk by the winds of Heaven. Only one thing remained
to be done; and the next minute saw a pen run through the tables that
had taken three years to compile. The labor was lost--the work had to be
begun again.
DOING.
Oh, friend, whoe'er thou art, who dost rejoice
In the sweet tones of thy melodious voice;
Which to thy fancy are so rich and clear,
Falling like music, on the list'ning ear,
Of thee I ask,
What hast thou done of that thou hast to do?
Art silent? Then I say,
Until thy deeds are many let thy words be few.
Oh, man, whoe'er thou art, within whose breast
The glowing thoughts disdain ignoble rest;
Whose soul is laboring with a monstrous birth
Of winged words, to scatter through the earth
Of thee I ask,
What hast thou done of that thou hast to do?
Art silent? Then I say,
Until thy deeds are many let thy words be few.
Oh, brother mine, who would'st reform mankind
Purging the dross, and leaving all refined;
Preaching of sinless love, sobriety,
Of goodness, endless peace, and charity,
Of thee I ask,
What hast thou done of that thou hast to do?
Art silent? Then I say,
Until thy deeds are many let thy words be few.
Speech without action is a moral dearth,
And to advance the world is little worth:
Let us think much, say little, and much do,
If to ourselves and God we will be true;
And ask within,
What have I done of that I have to do?
Is conscience silent--say,
Oh! let my deeds be many and my words be few.
J. G. L. BULLEID.
[From Household Words.]
YOUNG RUSSIA.
Certain social theorists have, of late years, proclaimed themselves to
the puzzled public under the name and signification of "Young." Young
France, Young Germany, and Young England have had their day, and having
now grown older, and by consequence wiser, are comparatively mute. In
accordance with what seems a natural law, it is only when a fashion is
being forgotten where it originated--in the west--that is reaches
Russia, which rigidly keeps a century or so behind the rest of the
Continent. It is only recently, therefore, that we hear of "Young
Russia."
The main principles of all these national youths are alike. They are
pleasingly picturesque--simperingly amiable; with a pretty and piquant
dash of paradox. What they propose is not new birth, or dashing out into
new systems, and taking advantage of new ideas; but reverting to old
systems, and furbishing them up so as to look as good as new.
Re-juvenescence is their aim; the middle ages their motto. Young
England, to wit, desires to replace things as they were in the days of
the pack-horse, the thumb-screw, the monastery, the ducking-stool, the
knight errant, trial by battle, and the donjon-keep. To these he wishes
to apply all possible modern improvements, to adapt them to present
ideas, and to present events. Though he would have no objection to his
mailed knight traveling per first-class railway, he would abolish
luggage-trains to encourage intestine trade and the breed of that noble
animal the pack-horse. He has, indeed, done something in this monastic
line; but his efforts for the dissemination of superstition, and his
denunciations of a certain sort of witchcraft, have signally failed. In
truth, the task he has set himself--that of re-constructing society anew
out of old materials--though highly archæological, historical, and
poetic, has the fatal disadvantage of being simply impossible. It is
telling the people of the nineteenth century to carry their minds,
habits, and sentiments back, so as to become people of the thirteenth
century; it is trying to make new muslin out of mummy cloth, or razors
out of rusty nails.
"Young Russia" is an equal absurdity, but from a precisely opposite
cause; for, indeed, this sort of youth out of age is a series of
paradoxes. The Russian of the present day _is_ the Russian of past ages.
He exists by rule--the rule of despotism--which is as old as the Medes
and Persians; and which forces him into an iron mould that shapes his
appearance, his mind, and his actions to one pattern, from one
generation to another Hence every thing that lives and breathes in
Russia being antique, there is no appreciable antiquity. The new school,
therefore--even if amateur politics were allowable in Russia, which they
are not, as a large population of exiles in Siberia can testify--has no
materials to work upon. Stagnation is the political law, and "Young
Russia" dies in its babyhood for want of sustenance. What goes by the
name of civilization, is no advance in wealth, morals, or social
happiness. It is merely a tinsel coating over the rottenness and rust
with which Russian life is "sicklied o'er." It has nothing to do with a
single soul below the rank of a noble; and with him it means Champagne,
bad pictures, Parisian tailors, operas, gaming, and other expenses and
elegancies imported from the West. Hundreds of provincial noblemen are
ruined every year in St. Petersburg, in undergoing this process of
civilization. The fortunes thus wasted are enormous; yet there is only
one railroad now in operation throughout the whole empire, and that
belongs to the Emperor, and leads to one of his palaces a few miles from
the capital. Such is Russian civilization. What then is "Young Russia"
to do? Ask one of its youngest apostles, Ivan Vassilievitsch.
This young gentleman--for an introduction to whom we are indebted to
Count Sollogub--was, not long ago, parading the Iverskoy boulevard--one
of the thirteen which half encircle Moscow--when he met a neighbor from
the province of Kazan. Ivan had lately returned from abroad. He was a
perfect specimen of the new school, inside and out. Within, he had
imbibed all the ideas of the juvenile or verdant schools of Germany,
France, and England. Without, he displayed a London macintosh; his coat
and trowsers had been designed and executed by Parisian artists; his
hair was cut in the style of the middle ages; and his chin showed the
remnants of a Vandyke beard. He also resembled the new school in another
respect: he had spent all his money, yet he was separated from home by
the distance of a long--a Russian--journey.
To meet with a neighbor--which he did--who traveled in his own carriage,
in which he offered a seat, was the height of good fortune. The more so,
as Ivan wished to see as much of Russian life on the road as possible,
and to note down his _impressions_ in a journal, whose white leaves were
as yet unsullied with ink. From the information he intended to collect,
he intended to commence helping to re-construct Russian society after
the order of the new Russiaites.
The vehicle in which this great mission was to be performed, was a
humble family affair called a _Tarantas_. After a series of
adventures--but which did not furnish Ivan a single _impression_ for his
note-book--they arrive at Vladimir, the capital of a province or
"government." Here the younger traveler meets with a friend, to whom he
confides his intention of visiting all the other Government towns for
"Young Russia" purposes. His friend's reply is dispiriting to the last
degree.
"There is no difference between our government towns. See one, and
you'll know them all!"
"Is it possible?"
"It is so, I assure you. Every one has a High-street one principal shop,
where the country gentlemen buy silks for their wives, and Champagne
for themselves; then there are the Courts of Justice, the
assembly-rooms, an apothecary's shop, a river, a square, a bazaar, two
or three street-lamps, sentry-boxes for the watchmen, and the governor's
house."
"The society, however, in the government towns must be different?"
"On the contrary. The society is still more uniform than the buildings."
"You astonish me: how is that?"
"Listen. There is, of course, in every government town a governor. These
do not always resemble each other; but as soon as any one of them
appears, police and secretaries immediately become active, merchants and
tradesmen bow, and the gentry draw themselves up, with, however, some
little awe. Wherever the governor goes, he is sure to find Champagne,
the wine so much patronized in the province, and every body drinks a
bumper to the health of the '_father of the province_.' Governors
generally are well-bred, and sometimes very proud. They like to give
dinner-parties, and benevolently condescend to play a game of whist with
rich brandy-contractors and landowners."
"That's a common thing," remarked Ivan Vassilievitsch.
"Do not interrupt me. Besides the governor, there is in nearly every
government town the governor's lady. She is rather a peculiar personage;
generally brought up in one of the two capitals, and spoiled with the
cringing attentions of her company. On her husband's first entry into
office, she is polite and affable; later, she begins to feel weary of
the ordinary provincial intrigues and gossips; she gets accustomed to
the slavish attentions she receives, and lays claim to them. At this
period she surrounds herself with a parasitical suite; she quarrels with
the lady of the vice-governor; she brags of St. Petersburg; speaks with
disdain of her provincial circle, and finally draws upon herself the
utmost universal ill-feeling, which is kept up till the day of her
departure, when all goes into oblivion, every thing is pardoned, and
every body bids her farewell with tears."
"Two persons do not form the whole society of a town," interrupted again
Ivan Vassilievitsch.
"Patience, brother, patience! Certainly there are other persons besides
the two I have just spoken of: there is the vice-governor and his lady;
several presidents, with their respective ladies, and an innumerable
crowd of functionaries serving under their leadership. The ladies are
ever quarreling in words, while their husbands do the same thing upon
foolscap. The presidents, for the most part, are men of advanced age and
business-like habits, with great crosses hanging from their necks, and
are, during the day time, to be seen out of their courts only on
holidays. The government attorney is generally a single man, and an
enviable match. The superior officer of the _gens-d'armes_ is a 'good
fellow.' The nobility-marshal a great sportsman. Besides the government
and the local officers, there live in a government town stingy
landowners, or those who have squandered away their property; they
gamble from evening to morning, nay, from morning to evening too,
without getting the least bit tired of their exercise."
"Now, about their mode of living?" asked Ivan Vassilievitsch.
"The mode of living is a very dull one. At exchange of ceremonious
visits. Intrigues, cards--cards, intrigues. Now and then, perchance, you
may meet with a kind, hospitable family, but such a case is very rare;
you much oftener find a ludicrous affectation to imitate the manners of
an imaginary high life. There are no public amusements in a government
town. During winter a series of balls are announced to take place at the
Assembly-rooms; however from an absurd primness, these balls are little
frequented, because no one wants to be the first in the room. The '_bon
genre_' remains at home and plays whist. In general, I have remarked,
that on arriving in a government town, it seems as if you were too early
or too late for some extraordinary event. You are ever welcomed: 'What a
pity you were not here yesterday!' or, 'You should stay here till
to-morrow.'"
In process of time Ivan Vassilievitsch and his good-natured fat
companion, Vassily Ivanovitsch, reach a borough town, where the Tarantas
breaks down. There is a tavern, and here is a description of it.
"The tavern was like any other tavern--a large wooden hut, with the
usual out-buildings. At the entrance stood an empty cart. The staircase
was crooked and shaky, and at the top of it, like a moving candelabrum,
stood a waiter with a tallow candle in his hand. To the right was the
tap-room, painted from time immemorial to imitate a grove. Tumblers,
tea-pots, decanters, three silver and a great number of pewter spoons,
adorned the shelves of a cup-board; a couple of lads in chintz shirts,
with dirty napkins over their shoulders, busied themselves at the bar.
Through an open door you saw in the next room a billiard-table, and a
hen gravely promenading upon it.
"Our travelers were conducted into the principal room of this elegant
establishment, where they found, seated round a boiling tea-urn, three
merchants--one gray-haired, one red-haired, and one dark-haired. Each of
these was armed with a steaming tumbler; each of them sipped, smacked
his lips, stroked his beard, and sipped again the fragrant beverage.
"The red-haired man was saying,
"'I made, last summer, a splendid bargain. I had bought from a company
of Samara-Tartars, some five hundred bags of prime quality, which I
purchased from a nobleman who was in want of money, but such dreadful
stuff it was, that if it had not been for the very low price, I would
never have thought of looking at it. What did I do? I mixed these two
cargoes and sold the whole lot to a brandy-contractor at Ribna, for
prime quality.'
"'It was a clever speculation,' remarked the dark-haired.
"'A commercial trick!' added the gray-haired.
"While this conversation was proceeding, Vassily Ivanovitsch and Ivan
Vassilievitsch had taken seats at a separate little table; they had
ordered their tea, and were listening to what the three merchants were
saying.
"A poor-looking fellow came in, and took from his breast-pocket an
incredibly dirty sheet of paper, in which were wrapped up bank-notes and
some gold, and handed it over to the gray-haired merchant, who, having
counted them over, said,
"'Five thousand two hundred and seventeen roubles. Is it right?'
"'Quite right, sir.'
"'It shall be delivered according to your wish.'
"'Ivan asked why the sender had not taken a receipt?'
"The red and dark-haired merchants burst out laughing; the gray-haired
got into a passion.
"'A receipt!' he cried out, furiously, 'a receipt! I would have broken
his jaw with his own money, had he dared to ask me for a receipt. I have
been a merchant now more than fifty years, and I have never yet been
insulted by being asked to give a receipt.'
"'You see, sir,' said the red-haired merchant, it is only with noblemen
that such things as receipts and bills of exchange exist. We commercial
people do not make use of them. Our simple word suffices. We have no
time to spare for writing. For instance, sir: here is Sidor Avdeivitsch,
who has millions of roubles in his trade, and his whole writing consists
of a few scraps of paper, for memory's sake, sir.'
"'I don't understand that,' interrupted Ivan Vassilievitsch.
"'How could you, sir? It is mere commercial business, without plan or
_façade_. We ourselves learn it from our childhood: first as errand
boys, then as clerks, till we become partners in the business. I confess
it is hard work.'"
Upon this text Ivan preaches a "Young Russia discourse."
"'Allow me a few words,' he said with fervor. 'It appears to me that we
have in Russia a great number of persons buying and selling, but yet, I
must say, we have no systematic commerce. For commerce, science, and
learning, are indispensable; a conflux of civilized men, clever
mathematical calculations--but not, as seems to be the case with you,
dependence upon mere chance. You earn millions, because you convert the
consumer into a victim, against whom every kind of cheat is pardonable,
and then you lay by farthing by farthing, refusing yourselves not only
all the enjoyments of life, but even the most necessary comforts.... You
brag of your threadbare clothes; but surely this extreme parsimony is a
thousand times more blamable than the opposite prodigality of those of
your comrades who spend their time among gipsies, and their money in
feasting. You boast of your ignorance, because you do not know what
civilization is. Civilization, according to your notions, consists in
shorter laps of a coat, foreign furniture, bronzes, and champagne--in a
word, in outward trifles and silly customs. Trust me, not such is
civilization.... Unite yourselves! Be it your vocation to lay open all
the hidden riches of our great country; to diffuse life and vigor into
all its veins; to take the whole management of its material interests
into your hands. Unite your endeavors in this beautiful deed, and you
may be certain of success! Why should Russia be worse than England?
Comprehend only your calling; let the beam of civilization fall upon
you, and your love for your fatherland will strengthen such a union; and
you will see that not only the whole of Russia, but even the whole world
will be in your hands.'
"At this eloquent conclusion, the red and the dark-haired merchants
opened wide their eyes. They, of course, did not understand a single
word of Ivan Vassilievitsch's speech.
"'Alas, for Young Russia!' Ivan dolefully remarks in another place:
"I thought to study life in the provinces: there is no life in the
provinces; every one there is said to be of the same cut. Life in the
capitals is not a Russian life, but a weak imitation of the petty
perfections and gross vices of modern civilization. Where am I then to
find Russia? In the lower classes, perhaps, in the every-day life of the
Russian peasant? But have I not been now for five days chiefly among
this class? I prick up my ears and listen; I open wide my eyes and look,
and do what I may, I find not the least trifle worth noting in my
'_Impressions_.' The country is dead; there is nothing but land, land,
land; so much land, indeed, that my eyes get tired of looking at it: a
dreadful road, wagons of goods, swearing carriers, drunken stage
inspectors; beetles creeping on every wall; soups with the smell of
tallow candles! How is it possible for any respectable person to occupy
himself with such nasty stuff? And what is yet more provoking, is the
doleful uniformity which tires you so much, and affords you no rest
whatever. Nothing new, nothing unexpected! To-morrow what has been
to-day; to-day what has been yesterday. Here, a post-stage, there a
post-stage, and further the same post-stage again; here, a village elder
asking for drink-money, and again to infinity village elders all asking
for drink-money. What can I write? I begin to agree with Vassily
Ivanovitsch; he is right in saying that we do not travel, and that there
is no traveling in Russia. We simply are going to Mordassy. Alas! for my
'_Impressions_.'"
Whoever wants to know more of this amusing Young Russian, must consult
"The _Tarantas_." We can assure the reader that the book is fraught with
a store of amusement--chiefly descriptions of town and country life in
Russia--not often compressed into the modest and inexpensive compass of
a thin duodecimo.
[From Household Words.]
THE ORPHAN'S VOYAGE HOME.
The men could hardly keep the deck,
So bitter was the night;
Keen northeast winds sang through the shrouds,
The deck was frosty white;
While overhead the glistening stars
Put forth their points of light.
On deck, behind a bale of goods,
Two orphans crouch'd, to sleep;
But 'twas so cold, the youngest boy
In vain tried not to weep:
They were so poor, they had no right
Near cabin doors to creep.
The elder round the younger wrapt
His little ragged cloak,
To shield him from the freezing sleet,
And surf that o'er them broke;
Then drew him closer to his side,
And softly to him spoke:
"The night will not be long"--he said,
"And if the cold winds blow,
We shall the sooner reach our home,
And see the peat-fire glow;
But now the stars are beautiful--
Oh, do not tremble so!
"Come closer!--sleep--forget the frost--
Think of the morning red--
Our father and our mother soon
Will take us to their bed;
And in their warm arms we shall sleep."
He knew not they were dead.
For them no father to the ship
Shall with the morning come;
For them no mother's loving arms
Are spread to take them home:
Meanwhile the cabin passengers
In dreams of pleasure roam.
At length the orphans sank to sleep
All on the freezing deck;
Close huddled side to side--each arm
Clasp'd round the other's neck.
With heads bent down, they dream'd the earth
Was fading to a speck.
The steerage passengers have all
Been taken down below,
And round the stove they warm their limbs
Into a drowsy glow;
And soon within their berths forget
The icy wind and snow.
Now morning dawns: the land in sight
Smiles beam on every face!
The pale and qualmy passengers
Begin the deck to pace,
Seeking along the sun-lit cliffs
Some well known spot to trace.
Only the orphans do not stir,
Of all this bustling train:
They reached their _home_ this starry night!
They will not stir again!
The winter's breath proved kind to them,
And ended all their pain.
But in their deep and freezing sleep,
Clasp'd rigid to each other,
In dreams they cried, "The bright morn breaks,
Home! home! is here, my brother!
The Angel Death has been our friend--
We come! dear Father! Mother!"
[From the Autobiography of Leigh Hunt.]
LORD BYRON, WORDSWORTH, AND CHARLES LAMB.
In this house, Lord Byron continued the visits which he made me in
prison. Unfortunately, I was too ill to return them. He pressed me very
much to go to the theatre with him; but illness, and the dread of
committing my critical independence, alike prevented me. His lordship
was one of a management that governed Drury-lane Theatre at that time,
and that were not successful. He got nothing by it, but petty vexations
and a good deal of scandal.
Lord Byron's appearance at that time was the finest I ever saw it. He
was fatter than before his marriage, but only just enough so to complete
the elegance of his person; and the turn of his head and countenance had
a spirit and elevation in it, which, though not unmixed with disquiet,
gave him altogether a very noble look. His dress, which was black, with
white trowsers, and which he wore buttoned close over the body,
completed the succinctness and gentlemanliness of his appearance. I
remember one day, as he stood looking out of the window, he resembled in
a lively manner the portrait of him by Phillips, by far the best that
has appeared; I mean the best of him at his best time of life, and the
most like him in features as well as expression. He sat one morning so
long, that Lady Byron sent up twice to let him know she was waiting. Her
ladyship used to go on in the carriage to Henderson's nursery ground, to
get flowers. I had not the honor of knowing her, nor ever saw her but
once, when I caught a glimpse of her at the door. I thought she had a
pretty, earnest look, with her "pippin" face; an epithet by which she
playfully designated herself.
* * * * *
It was here also I had the honor of a visit from Mr. Wordsworth. He came
to thank me for the zeal I had shown in advocating the cause of his
genius. I had the pleasure of showing him his book on my shelves by the
side of Milton; a sight which must have been the more agreeable,
inasmuch as the visit was unexpected. He favored me, in return, with
giving his opinion of some of the poets his contemporaries, who would
assuredly not have paid him a visit on the same grounds on which he was
pleased to honor myself. Nor do I believe, that from that day to this,
he thought it becoming in him to reciprocate the least part of any
benefit which a word in good season may have done for him. Lord Byron,
in resentment for my having called him the "prince of the bards of his
time," would not allow him to be even the "one-eyed monarch of the
blind." He said he was the "blind monarch of the one-eyed." I must still
differ with his lordship on that point; but I must own, that, after all
which I have seen and read, posterity, in my opinion, will differ not a
little with one person respecting the amount of merit to be ascribed to
Mr. Wordsworth; though who that one person is, I shall leave the reader
to discover.
Mr. Wordsworth, whom Mr. Hazlitt designated as one who would have had
the wide circle of his humanities made still wider, and a good deal more
pleasant, by dividing a little more of his time between his lakes in
Westmoreland and the hotels of the metropolis, had a dignified manner,
with a deep and roughish, but not unpleasing voice, and an exalted mode
of speaking. He had a habit of keeping his left hand in the bosom of his
waistcoat; and in this attitude, except when he turned round to take one
of the subjects of his criticism from the shelves (for his
contemporaries were there also), he sat dealing forth his eloquent but
hardly catholic judgments. In his "fathers house," there were not "many
mansions." He was as skeptical on the merits of all kinds of poetry but
one, as Richardson was on those of the novels of Fielding.
Under the study in which my visitor and I were sitting was an archway,
leading to a nursery-ground; a cart happened to go through it while I
was inquiring whether he would take any refreshment; and he uttered, in
so lofty a voice, the words, "Any thing which is _going forward_," that
I felt inclined to ask him whether he would take a piece of the cart.
Lamb would certainly have done it. But this was a levity which would
neither have been so proper on my part, after so short an acquaintance,
nor very intelligible perhaps, in any sense of the word, to the serious
poet. There are good-humored warrants for smiling, which lie deeper even
than Mr. Wordsworth's thoughts for tears.
I did not see this distinguished person again till thirty years
afterward; when, I should venture to say, his manner was greatly
superior to what it was in the former instance; indeed, quite natural
and noble, with a cheerful air of animal as well as spiritual
confidence; a gallant bearing, curiously reminding one of a certain
illustrious duke, as I have seen him walking some dozen years ago by a
lady's side, with no unbecoming oblivion of his time of life. I
observed, also, that he no longer committed himself in scornful
criticisms, or, indeed, in any criticisms whatever, at least as far as I
knew. He had found out that he could, at least, afford to be silent.
Indeed, he spoke very little of any thing.
Walter Scott said, that the eyes of Burns were the finest he ever saw. I
can not say the same of Mr. Wordsworth; that is, not in the sense of the
beautiful, or even of the profound. But certainly I never beheld eyes
that looked so inspired or supernatural. They were like fires half
burning, half smouldering, with a sort of acrid fixture of regard, and
seated at the further end of two caverns. One might imagine Ezekiel or
Isaiah to have had such eyes.
* * * * *
Charles Lamb had a head worthy of Aristotle, with as fine a heart as
ever beat in human bosom, and limbs very fragile to sustain it. There
was a caricature of him sold in the shops, which pretended to be a
likeness. Procter went into the shop in a passion, and asked the man
what he meant by putting forth such a libel. The man apologized, and
said that the artist meant no offense. There never was a true portrait
of Lamb. His features were strongly yet delicately cut: he had a fine
eye as well as forehead; and no face carried in it greater marks of
thought and feeling. It resembled that of Bacon, with less worldly vigor
and more sensibility.
As his frame, so was his genius. It was as fit for thought as could be,
and equally as unfit for action; and this rendered him melancholy,
apprehensive, humorous, and willing to make the best of every thing as
it was, both from tenderness of heart and abhorrence of alteration. His
understanding was too great to admit an absurdity; his frame was not
strong enough to deliver it from a fear. His sensibility to strong
contrasts was the foundation of his humor, which was that of a wit at
once melancholy and willing to be pleased. He would beard a
superstition, and shudder at the old phantasm while he did it. One could
have imagined him cracking a jest in the teeth of a ghost, and then
melting into thin air himself, out of a sympathy with the awful. His
humor and his knowledge both, were those of Hamlet, of Molière, of
Carlin, who shook a city with laughter, and, in order to divert his
melancholy, was recommended to go and hear himself. Yet he extracted a
real pleasure out of his jokes, because good-heartedness retains that
privilege when it fails in every thing else. I should say he
condescended to be a punster, if condescension had been a word befitting
wisdom like his. Being told that somebody had lampooned him, he said,
"Very well, I'll Lamb-pun him." His puns were admirable, and often
contained as deep things as the wisdom of some who have greater names;
such a man, for instance, as Nicole the Frenchman, who was a baby to
him. He would have cracked a score of jokes at him, worth his whole book
of sentences; pelted his head with pearls. Nicole would not have
understood him, but Rochefoucault would, and Pascal, too; and some of
our old Englishmen would have understood him still better. He would have
been worthy of hearing Shakspeare read one of his scenes to him, hot
from the brain. Commonplace found a great comforter in him as long as
it was good-natured; it was to the ill-natured or the dictatorial only
that he was startling. Willing to see society go on as it did, because
he despaired of seeing it otherwise, but not at all agreeing in his
interior with the common notions of crime and punishment, he
"_dumb-founded_" a long tirade one evening, by taking the pipe out of
his mouth, and asking the speaker, "Whether he meant to say that a thief
was not a good man?" To a person abusing Voltaire, and indiscreetly
opposing his character to that of Jesus Christ, he said admirably well
(though he by no means overrated Voltaire, nor wanted reverence in the
other quarter), that "Voltaire was a very good Jesus Christ _for the
French_." He liked to see the church-goers continue to go to church, and
wrote a tale in his sister's admirable little book (_Mrs. Leicester's
School_) to encourage the rising generation to do so; but to a
conscientious deist he had nothing to object; and if an atheist had
found every other door shut against him, he would assuredly not have
found his. I believe he would have had the world remain precisely as it
was, provided it innovated no farther; but this spirit in him was any
thing but a worldly one, or for his own interest. He hardly contemplated
with patience the new buildings in the Regent's Park: and, privately
speaking, he had a grudge against _official_ heaven-expounders, or
clergymen. He would rather, however, have been with a crowd that he
disliked, than felt himself alone. He said to me one day, with a face of
great solemnity, "What must have been that man's feelings, who thought
himself _the first deist_?" Finding no footing in certainty, he
delighted to confound the borders of theoretical truth and falsehood. He
was fond of telling wild stories to children, engrafted on things about
them; wrote letters to people abroad, telling them that a friend of
theirs had come out in genteel comedy; and persuaded George Dyer that
_Lord Castlereagh_ was the author of Waverley! The same excellent person
walking one evening out of his friend's house into the New River, Lamb
(who was from home at the time) wrote a paper under his signature of
Elia, stating, that common friends would have stood dallying on the
bank, have sent for neighbors, &c., but that _he_, in his magnanimity,
jumped in, and rescued his friend after the old noble fashion. He wrote
in the same magazine two lives of Liston and Munden, which the public
took for serious, and which exhibit an extraordinary jumble of imaginary
facts and truth of by-painting. Munden he made born at "Stoke Pogeis:"
the very sound of which was like the actor speaking and digging his
words. He knew how many false conclusions and pretensions are made by
men who profess to be guided by facts only, as if facts could not be
misconceived, or figments taken for them; and, therefore, one day, when
somebody was speaking of a person who valued himself on being a
matter-of-fact man, "Now," said he, "I value myself on being a
matter-of-lie man." This did not hinder his being a man of the greatest
veracity, in the ordinary sense of the word; but "Truth," he said, "was
precious, and not to be wasted on every body."
Lamb had seen strange faces of calamity; but they did not make him love
those of his fellow-creatures the less. Few persons guessed what he had
suffered in the course of his life, till his friend Talfourd wrote an
account of it, and showed the hapless warping that disease had given to
the fine brain of his sister.
AMERICAN VANITY.
We are not at all surprised at what in this country is most foolishly
called the conceit and vanity of the Americans. What people in the world
have so fine, so magnificent a country? Besides that, they have some
reason to be proud of themselves. We have given the chief features of
their eastern and inland territory; if the reader has any imagination
for ideas of this kind, let him picture to himself what will be the
aspect of things when the tide of population has crossed the long range
of the Rocky Mountains, and, occupying the valleys of the western coast,
has built other Bostons and New Yorks in the harbors of Oregon and
California. This tide of population is now advancing along a line of
more than a thousand miles, at the rate of eighteen miles a year; and
each year, as the population behind becomes larger, the number of new
settlers is increased, and the rate of advance is accelerated. This vast
crowd of ever-onward-pressing settlers is not formed of the same
materials as the inhabitants of an European province: that is, there are
not at its head a few intelligent, but delicately-brought-up men of
capital, while all the rest are ignorant laborers; but every one of
these pioneers of civilization can handle the ax and the rifle, and can
"calculate." If ever these magnificent dreams of the American people are
realized--and all that is wanted for their realization is that things
should only go on as they have been going on for the last two
centuries--there will be seated upon that vast continent a population
greater than that of all Europe, all speaking the same language, all
active-minded, intelligent, and well off. They will stand, as it were,
the centre of the world, between the two great oceans, with Europe on
one hand and Asia on the other. With such a future before him, we must
pardon the Yankee if we find a little dash of self-complacency in his
composition; and bear with the surprise and annoyance which he expresses
at finding that we know so little of himself or of his country. Our
humble opinion is that we ought to know better.
Great as is the influence which America has already had upon Europe, we
conceive that this is a mere intimation of the influence which it is
destined to have upon the world.--_Frazer's Mag._
MONTHLY RECORD OF CURRENT EVENTS.
The domestic events of the month (which, in accordance with requests
from many quarters, this Magazine will hereafter regularly record) have
not been numerous or very important. The _Invasion of Cuba_, by a force
collected, organized, armed, officered, and disciplined within the
United States, and the successful repulse of that invasion, have been
the leading topic of comment. The expedition, 300 in number, left New
Orleans, under command of General LOPEZ, on the 25th of April and the 2d
of May, and landed at Cardenas on the morning of the 19th of May. A
brief struggle ensued between the invaders and the troops, in which the
latter were repulsed, the governor captured, his palace plundered, and a
large quantity of public money seized. The invaders had counted upon
accessions to their ranks from the Spanish army, and from the
disaffected inhabitants. In this, however, they were entirely
disappointed, and LOPEZ accordingly re-embarked on the steamer which had
taken him thither, and with a few of his followers, made his escape to
the United States, leaving the great body of his adherents to the tender
mercies of the authorities of Cuba. Lopez has been arrested at New
Orleans, and awaits trial on charge of having violated the United States
neutrality act of 1818: and a good deal of interest is felt in the
disposition which the Cuban authorities will make of the prisoners who
have fallen into their hands. It seems that a Spanish steamer captured
two vessels in the Mexican waters, laden with men whom they suspected of
having intended to join the invading expedition, and took them into
Havana. The President of the United States has made a peremptory demand
for the release of these prisoners, and declares that a clear
distinction must be made between those proved guilty of actual
participation, and those suspected of an intention to join, in the
invasion. The result of this demand is not yet known. It is not
believed, however, that the Cuban authorities will pursue a course of
unnecessary or unjust rigor, as it could scarcely fail to involve them
in serious difficulties with the United States.
Both Houses of CONGRESS are still engaged in debating the various
questions growing out of slavery. In the House a bill for the immediate
admission of California is pending, and debate upon it has been closed;
but a decisive vote is evaded from day to day. Whenever that can be
reached, there will probably be found to be a majority in favor of the
bill. In the Senate a bill is pending which provides: 1. For the
admission of California; 2. For organizing territorial governments for
New Mexico and Utah, without any provision on the subject of slavery;
and 3. For paying Texas a sum not specified, for relinquishing her claim
to a part of New Mexico. The bill has been very fully and very ably
discussed, and votes have been taken upon a great number of amendments
to it, the most important of which was one prohibiting slavery forever
from these territories. This was offered by Senator Seward of New York,
and rejected, 33 to 23. It is believed that the final vote will be taken
upon the hill before many days: the chances are in favor of its passage.
The attention of Congress has been so thoroughly occupied with these
bills, that no other business of any importance has been transacted or
even entertained. The general subject of slavery, which gives to them
all their interest, has entered largely into the public discussions of
the month. Mr. WEBSTER has written a letter to the citizens of
Newburyport, Mass., upon the wrong done to the South by refusing to
surrender their fugitive slaves, urging the necessity for a more
stringent law, and expressing the opinion, that there is nothing, either
in the spirit or the letter of the Constitution, requiring a jury trial
to determine the question of slavery, when an alleged fugitive is
seized. This letter has elicited a reply from Hon. HORACE MANN, of the
House, also from Massachusetts, which enforces the contrary opinion,
with abundant and vehement rhetoric and cogent argument. Prof. STUART,
of Andover, has also published a pamphlet in support of Mr. Webster's
views on the general subject.--The convention of delegates intended to
represent the slave-holding states, called some months since, met at
Nashville, Tenn., on the 3d of June, and adjourned after a session of
ten days. Judge SHARKEY, of Mississippi, presided. The attendance was
thin, delegates being present from less than half the districts
interested, and they having been elected by less than a tenth of the
popular vote. Resolutions were adopted, affirming the claims of the
slave-holding states, and the convention adjourned to meet again six
weeks after the adjournment of Congress, then to take such action as the
legislation of the present session may render necessary.--A new paper
called "The Southern Press" has been established at Washington, for the
express purpose of advocating the interests of slavery. It is under the
patronage of 57 southern members of Congress, and is intended to abstain
from partisan discussions.--The subject of slavery also influences the
action of the State Legislatures, which are in session, to a great
extent. In the Connecticut Senate, resolutions approving of the bill
pending in the U.S. Senate were rejected, 16 to 6. The Legislature has
made two unsuccessful efforts to elect a U. S. Senator, in place of Mr.
Baldwin, whose term expires with this session.--Senator DICKINSON, of
New York, received from his political friends the compliment of a
public dinner in the city of New York, on the 17th ult.--Hon. EDWARD
GILBERT, Member of Congress elect from California, attended a public
dinner at Albany, the place of his early residence, on the 4th. In an
eloquent speech which he made upon that occasion, he expressed the
ardent attachment of California to the Union, and the determination of
her people not to permit slavery to be introduced within her limits.--A
convention in Ohio, to revise the Constitution of that state, is now in
session. The tendency of its action, so far as it is developed, has been
toward greater equality and democratic freedom.--A similar convention is
also in session in Michigan.--Gov. CRITTENDEN of Kentucky, recently
visited Indiana by special invitation of Gov. Wright, of that state. The
two being political opponents, and the visit being in some sense of an
official character, the circumstance has attracted a good deal of
attention. The reception of Gov. Crittenden was public, and very happy
greetings were exchanged on both sides. Gov. C. made a very eloquent
speech, expressing the value of the American Union and the devotion of
the American people to its preservation.--The anniversary of the Battle
of Bunker Hill was celebrated with great _éclat_ at Boston, on the 17th.
The Oration was delivered by the Hon. Edward Everett, and was one of his
most finished and eloquent efforts.--The treaty between Great Britain
and the United States, negotiated at Washington, has been ratified by
the Senate. It is highly honorable to both countries, and advantageous
to the interests of commerce throughout the world. The neutrality of the
Isthmus, in case of war, is mutually guaranteed.--The war between
Faustin and the Dominicans is still continued: a vessel fitted out at
New York, and laden with cannon and munitions of war, for the emperor,
has been seized by the U. S. authorities, and detained for violation of
the neutrality act of 1818.
* * * * *
Our intelligence from CALIFORNIA is to the 1st of May. Trade was dull
but was receiving an impulse from the reopening of the season for
mining. The Legislature had adjourned after passing a large number of
bills. One of its most important acts was one imposing a tax of $25 per
month upon every foreigner who should dig for gold in the mines. The
measure was vindicated on grounds of justice as well as from the
necessities of the state treasury: difficulty was apprehended in some
quarters in attempting to carry it out.--Public meetings had been held
in regard to the unjust delay to which the application of the state for
admission into the Union, is subjected by Congress. Intimations were
thrown out that the state would withdraw her application and maintain
her independence, unless action should be had: but they do not express
any thing like the general sentiment of the people.--New veins of gold
had been discovered--new towns commenced, and emigrants continued to
arrive. Several heavy failures had occurred, but business generally was
good.
From the Isthmus of Panama we have news to the 1st of June. A serious
riot had occurred there between the emigrants and the natives in which
two or three were killed on each side. It grew out of the arrest of a
negro boy on charge of theft, and a supposition on the part of the
natives that the Americans intended to hang him. Such an incident,
however, indicates an unpleasant state of feeling between the parties.
Quiet, however, had been restored.
* * * * *
Of LITERARY and SCIENTIFIC Intelligence there is not much. Notices of
the most important books published during the month will be found in
another department of this Magazine. The question of the _Unity of the
Human Race_ has been recently revived by some incidental remarks made at
Charleston, S. C., by Prof. Agassiz of Harvard, which were opposed to
that theory. Dr. Smyth, a learned divine of that city, wrote a book in
refutation of the Professor; and we observe that the latter has pursued
the matter still farther in a lecture subsequently delivered at Boston.
He does not enter, however, into any full discussion of the subject, but
takes occasion to disavow the intention imputed to him, of designing to
question the authenticity or authority of the Mosaic Record.
Prof. LEWIS, of Union College, has published an Address delivered there
some months since, in which he reviews with great ability the theories
and schemes so abundant at the present day, of which Nature, Progress,
and Ideas are the common watchwords. He treats them all as branches of
_Naturalism_ and as in direct hostility to the Scriptural doctrine of
the Divine government. The discourse is marked by the scholarship,
vigor, and clear analysis which characterize all the productions of this
distinguished writer.--Bishop HUGHES has also entered the lists against
the prevalent Socialism of the day; not, however, in an original work
but by causing to be reprinted the French work of the Abbé Martinet,
entitled "Religion in Society," and by writing an introduction to it.--A
new book on _California_, by Rev. WALTER COLTON, is soon to be issued.
Even in the multiplicity of books upon this subject that have recently
been given to the public, one from Mr. Colton's pen can hardly fail to
attract and reward attention.--A work on the _Logic and Utility of
Mathematics_, by Prof. DAVIES, is announced by Barnes & Co. Prof. D. is
singularly happy in presenting mathematical truth clearly and
attractively to the mind, and we anticipate, in this new work upon the
characteristic advantages of his favorite studies, a production that
will be widely useful, in promoting juster views of Education and better
modes for its successful prosecution.--Prof. BARTLETT of the West Point
Academy, announces a new work on _Natural Philosophy_, for the use of
Colleges, which will be of value.--Mr. E. D. MANSFIELD of Cincinnati, a
clear, strong and judicious writer, has also in press, a Treatise on
_American Education_, which will be pretty certain to contain a good
many practical suggestions worthy of attention.--The Reader of the
opening article in this number of the New Monthly Magazine, will be glad
to learn that an edition of the writings of DE QUINCEY is soon to be
issued from the Boston press of Ticknor, Reed and Fields. No living
English writer equals De Quincey in his peculiar department; in acute
analytical power, and in the precision with which he uses language. He
does not write for the masses--but to literary men, persons of
cultivated taste and a critical habit, an edition of his Essays and
multifarious sketches will be exceedingly acceptable. We presume,
however, that nothing like a complete collection of his writings can be
made.--An illustrated Edition of LONGFELLOW'S _Evangeline_ is also
announced, and a new volume of Poems by JOHN G. WHITTIER, one of the
most vigorous and masculine of living poets. Like other poets of the
day, Mr. Whittier addicts himself somewhat overmuch to hobbies, and his
present volume is to be mainly made up of Poems upon Labor.--LOWELL,
also, has a new Poem in press, called _The Nooning_.--A new volume by
Rev. HENRY GILES, entitled _Christian Thoughts on Life_, is announced.
Mr. Giles is an exceedingly fluent, vigorous and brilliant writer.--A
spicy controversy has grown out of a needless fling at the memory of
John Jacob Astor, in a lecture delivered some months since by the Hon.
Horace Mann. Mr. C. A. Bristed, grandson of the deceased Mr. Astor, has
replied to it in a pungent letter, vindicating his kinsman's character
and assailing with a good degree of vigor and success some of the
radical theories propounded by Mr. Mann.--A new play, entitled _The Very
Age_, by E. S. GOULD, is in press, and will soon be issued by the
Appletons. It is said to be a sharp and successful hit at sundry follies
which have too mush currency in society.--A good deal of public interest
has been excited by the announcement of an alleged scientific discovery
made by Mr. HENRY M. PAINE, of Massachusetts. He claims to have
established the positions that Water is a simple substance: that
hydrogen gas is produced by the combination of positive electricity, and
oxygen by the combination of negative electricity, with water; and that
by passing the hydrogen thus obtained through spirits of turpentine in
its natural state, it becomes carbonized and will support combustion.
The practical result claimed from the discovery is the ability to
furnish _light_ and _heat_ indefinitely at a merely nominal expense. The
importance of it, if it prove to be real, can not well be overrated. The
possibility of the thing, however, is peremptorily denied by scientific
men, and it must be evident to all that it directly contradicts
scientific principles that have been regarded as fundamental. Practical
experiment alone, made under proper restrictions and scientific
supervision, can determine its reality. If established the revolution
it would produce in the economy of life would not be greater than that
which would result from it in the received theories of science.
* * * * *
THE FOREIGN events of the past month have not been of striking interest
or importance. A diplomatic quarrel between England and France is the
only incident which has attracted any general attention. This
misunderstanding has grown out of the demands of British subjects,
supported by their government, against the government of Greece, for
losses sustained through its agency; but it is so entirely a matter of
form that no serious result can well be apprehended. For some years past
the English government has been pressing King Otho to an adjustment of
these claims. One of the most important of them is that of Mr. George
Finlay, who, when the Turks were leaving Greece on the formation of the
Hellenic Kingdom, purchased certain portions of land from some of these
emigrants. This was as long ago as in 1830, and his right to the
property thus purchased and paid for was never disputed. But six years
afterward King Otho seized upon these lands in order to inclose them in
the royal gardens, and he has never paid for the property to this day.
Another claim is that of Mr. Pacifico, a British subject, born at
Gibraltar, and occupying at Athens the office of Portuguese Consul. It
has been the custom for some years at Athens, on Easter-day, to burn an
effigy of Judas Iscariot; but, in 1847, in consequence of the presence
of Baron Rothschild, the government prevented the ceremony. The idle and
reckless portion of the people, to whom such public spectacles are
always matters of most interest, spread the report that Mr. Pacifico,
being a Jew, had occasioned the discontinuance of this custom. A mob was
soon raised by this report, which went to the house of the obnoxious
consul, beat in the door, plundered the house of money to the amount of
9800 drachmas, and destroyed papers proving claims upon the Portuguese
government to the amount of £21,295. For these losses Mr. Pacifico
claimed restitution, and invoked the protection and aid of the British
government in securing it.
These are the leading claims which have given occasion to the pending
difficulties. The British government took up the subject and pressed the
Greek authorities for payment of the claims. This was refused, and force
was resorted to. The ports of Greece were blockaded and a bombardment
threatened. This led France to offer her mediation, and Baron Gros was
dispatched by the French government to Athens to arrange the dispute
with Mr. Wyse, the British agent. The British government, for a long
time, refused to allow the intervention of France, as the question in
controversy was one which did not require or allow such interference But
M. Drouyn de Lhuys being sent to London, a negotiation was prosecuted
for three or four months, which resulted in an agreement between the
two governments. Meantime Baron Gros at Athens, having interrupted
proceedings there, Mr. Wyse resumes his demands upon the government of
Greece, and, by strenuous coercion, secures all he had demanded. And
Lord Palmerston decided that his proceedings must hold good. The French
government was, of course, indignant at this disregard of the London
convention, and withdrew her Minister from London. The dispute, at the
latest dates, had not been settled, but it is not likely to lead to any
thing more serious than a temporary estrangement between the two
nations. It is generally believed that the quarrel is kept open by the
French government, because it serves to divert public attention somewhat
from the unpopular and unconstitutional abridgment of the suffrage, and
because it has created an excitement favorable to the views and purposes
of Louis Napoleon.
Not the least important result of this controversy has been the new
position which it has induced Russia and Austria to take, in regard to
the rights of British subjects residing within their dominions. The
sympathies of these two nations, as well as of France, are, of course,
with Greece: and the attempt of England to extend full protection to its
subjects residing at Athens, has led the Emperor of Russia to address a
note to Lord Palmerston, stating that he utterly rejects the principle
on which British subjects or any other foreign residents in his own
states, or those of any other government, had a right to be treated more
favorably than the native subjects of such state; and he added, that for
his part, he should expect such strangers, the moment they came to
reside in his dominions, to conform themselves to the laws and usages
practiced by Russians. An old law or custom had existed in Russia to
this effect; it had long fallen into desuetude; but on the present
occasion it has been revived by the emperor, and is now in force. The
note of the Emperor of Austria is to the same effect; and though
separate from that of Russia, runs concurrently with it. Lord Palmerston
replied to this note, and received an answer couched in still stronger
language and concluding in the following emphatic clause: "As the manner
in which Lord Palmerston understands the protection due to English
subjects in foreign countries carries with it such serious
inconvenience, Russia and Austria will not henceforth grant the liberty
of residence to English subjects, except on condition of their
renouncing the protection of their Government." These documents have not
been published, but their substance is given, on the authority of the
London Times.
The doings of the British Parliament have not been of special
importance, though they have involved the discussion of important
measures. The misunderstanding with France gave rise to repeated demands
on the part of Lord Brougham and others, and explanations by the
ministers, in which the latter have been vehemently, and with apparent
justice, charged with prevarication and concealment.--The Subject of
University Reform has been incidentally discussed in the House of Lords
but without decisive results.
In the House of Commons attention was called to the case of the black
steward of a British vessel who had been taken out of the ship at
Charleston, S. C. and imprisoned for two months simply because he was _a
Man of Color_.--LORD PALMERSTON said that the case was not new; that
such a law as that mentioned existed in the State of Carolina; and that
the British government had remonstrated against it as a violation of the
principles of international law, as well as of the treaty of 1815: but
the reply had been that the Federal government was unable to revoke the
law, and that, if England insisted, the American government would be
compelled to terminate the treaty of 1815. The English government,
therefore, had not thought it expedient to press the matter further; but
it should be remembered that the law is known, and that those who go
there expose themselves to it voluntarily. This acquiescence of the
British government in a law and practice of one of the United States,
directly in violation of the rights of British subjects, has not escaped
severe animadversion.
The subject of a sinecure office in the Archdiocese of Canterbury has
attracted some attention. It seems that the emoluments of the office of
Register of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, have been from £9000 to
£12,000 per annum, and that the office itself is a sinecure. The usage
has been, that the archbishop for the time being should nominate the
incumbent of the office and two successors. Archbishop Moore appointed
his two sons, and they in succession held the office. Dr. Manners Sutton
appointed his grandson, the present Lord Canterbury, to the reversion of
the office--that grandson being then ten or twelve years old. The late
Dr. Howley made a communication to the government, that, in the
conscientious fulfillment of his duty he could not fill up the reversion
of this sinecure when it became vacant in 1845; and it remained vacant
at his death. When Dr. Sumner, the present archbishop, succeeded, he
found the reversion of the office vacant, and immediately filled it up,
by appointing his son, a young gentleman studying in the Temple. Lord
John Russell stated that the matter was under inquiry and that the
office would either be abolished or greatly altered.--The general
subject of reducing the salaries and wages paid in every department of
the public service, has also been discussed. The general sentiment
seemed to be that the servants of government were not overpaid, and the
motion for an address upon the subject was negatived.
While the bill for the government of the Australian Colonies was up, an
amendment was submitted to deprive the Colonial office of all
interference with the local administration of the colonies, and to give
them the uncontrolled management of their own affairs. Sir W.
Molesworth, who moved the amendment, closed a speech in support of it by
saying that there was a striking analogy between the government of the
United States and that which ought to be the system of government in
their colonial empire. "For," he said, "the United States form a system
of states clustered round a central republic; our colonial empire ought
to be a system of colonies clustered round the hereditary monarchy of
England. The hereditary monarchy should possess the powers of
government, with the exception of that of taxation, which the central
republic possesses. If it possessed less, the empire would cease to be
one body politic; if it continue to possess more, the colonies will be
discontented at the want of self-government, and on the first occasion
will imitate their brethren in America." The motion was negatived by 165
to 42. This vote is important as an indication of the sentiment of
Parliament in regard to Colonial government.--A motion to form an
ecclesiastical Constitution for the Australian Colonies was defeated.
The bill reducing the franchise required to constitute a Parliamentary
voter in Ireland to £8, has been passed. The discussion of this bill,
and the action upon it, is important as showing the tendency of public
sentiment in England toward a greater infusion of the democratic element
into the government. The bill was opposed expressly upon the ground of
its democratic tendencies by Lord Bernard, Mr. Napier, Lord Jocelyn, Mr.
Disraeli, and others, and its principal supporters were Mr. Shell, Sir
James Graham, and Lord John Russell. Sir JAMES GRAHAM'S speech was
remarkable for the broad ground on which he supported the measure;
alluding to the objection that the bill would unduly enlarge the
constituent body, he said, "I do not object to it on that ground. I must
say, considering the increase of the democratic element in our
institutions, that I see the greatest danger in erecting an immense
superstructure upon a narrow electoral basis. Sir, if that
superstructure can not stand upon an extended electoral basis, I am sure
that a narrow basis can not long sustain it. On principle, therefore, I
can not object to this bill as it extends that basis. Allusion has been
made to what has lately been witnessed elsewhere, and I think it is not
good policy to neglect examples which are patent and before our eyes. If
I were to mention what in my humble judgment was the immediate cause of
the fall of the kingly power of Louis Philippe, it would be, that he
attempted to maintain the semblance of representative government with a
constituent body, which, as compared with the great bulk of the
population, was dangerously narrow, and utterly inadequate. What was the
consequence? A tumult arose in the metropolis, and the government was
overthrown without a struggle. His power was buried in this ruin; and
the consequence has been, that for the last two years the nation has
been plunged into anarchy, and property and life have been rendered
insecure. But what is the return of the wave, and the reaction from that
state of things following the universal extension of the suffrage in
France? The return is a desire to base the suffrage, restricted as
compared with universal suffrage, on household suffrage, on permanent
residence, and the payment of local taxation. And, I am sure that that
is a safe basis on which to rest the franchise." These remarks were
loudly cheered throughout. The result of the division was that the third
reading was carried by 254 to 186, and the bill passed.
Other questions not directly political, but involving interests of
importance, have been brought in various ways into discussion, of which
we find a summary notice in the "Household Narrative." The Metropolitan
Interments bill has made no further progress in the House of Commons.
Lord Ashley has withdrawn his opposition to the government proposal for
giving practical efficacy to the Ten Hours Act; and all the more
rational of the Ten Hours champions have signified acquiescence in the
compromise. When the bill shall have passed, factories will be worked
from six to six on five days in the week, and between six and two on
Saturdays, with perfect leisure after two on the latter day, and with an
hour and a half for meals and leisure on each of the former. A measure
not less interesting to masses of the most industrious part of the
population, is the scheme for securing more direct responsibility in the
management of Savings Banks, and for extending the power of government
to grant annuities and life assurances of small amounts through the
medium of those institutions, which is now before the House of Commons
for discussion. Various projects of law reform have been started. A
commission has been issued, preparatory to a reform of the system of
special pleading. Lord Campbell has introduced a bill to simplify
criminal pleadings, and prevent the lamentable and too notorious defects
of justice on small technical points; the same dignitary has declared,
in judgment on a case in the Queen's Bench, that the intervention of an
attorney is not essential in the employment of a barrister, but that the
latter may receive his instructions directly from the party to the suit.
A spirited attempt is in progress, by Mr. Keogh, to reform the
Ecclesiastical Courts in Ireland; and the Lord High Chancellor Cottenham
has issued a series of orders which will have the effect of dispensing,
in a large class of suits, with the formality of bill and answer, and of
providing for the reference to the master, on a mere observance of
certain very simple forms. A motion to repeal the advertisement duty was
lost, 208 to 39. A motion to inquire into the sanitary condition of the
journeymen bakers was negatived, 90 to 44. A bill, the principal object
of which was to place in the hands of the Board of Commissioners the
regulation of all the Irish fisheries, was lost by a majority of 197 to
37. A bill proposing to allow railway companies to buy waste lands on
the margins of their railways and establish cemeteries on them, was
thrown out by 123 to 4. Lord John Russell has introduced a bill to
abolish the _Viceregal Office in Ireland_. The bill gives power to the
Queen to abolish the office by order in Council; to appoint a fourth
Secretary of State, chargeable, like the others, with any of the
functions of a Secretary of State, but in practice with Irish affairs:
some of the functions of the Lord Lieutenant will be transferred to the
Secretary for the Home Department, others be given to Her Majesty in
Council. The Lord Chancellor of Ireland will be President of the Privy
Council in Ireland. The bill was opposed by several Irish members, but
leave was given to bring it in by 107 to 13.
An official correspondence on the intention of Ministers to issue a
Royal Commission of inquiry into the state and revenues of the
UNIVERSITIES of Oxford and Cambridge has appeared in the newspapers.
Lord John Russell, after announcing the Ministerial intention in his
place in Parliament, wrote to the Chancellor of the two Universities "to
explain the views of her Majesty's confidential servants in recommending
this measure to her Majesty's approbation." His letter is now published;
and the other portion of the correspondence given to the public, is the
letter of the Duke of Wellington to the authorities of the University of
Oxford, requesting them to take the Premier's letter into consideration,
and give him the assistance of their opinions in a report; and the
report of the University authorities rendered in compliance with that
request. Lord John Russell, in his letter, after alluding briefly to the
legality of the Commission, puts forward the following general
considerations: "No one will now deny, that in the course of three
centuries the increase of general knowledge, the growth of modern
literature, the discoveries of physical and chemical science, have
rendered changes in the course of study at our national Universities
highly expedient. The Universities themselves have acknowledged this
expediency, and very large reforms of this nature have been adopted both
at Oxford and at Cambridge. These improvements, so wisely conceived,
reflect the highest credit on those learned bodies." He then proceeds to
state the general line of the limitations of the proposed action of the
government, saying that it is not to obstruct, but only to facilitate
the changes and improvements already in progress. Both the Universities
have warmly protested against the Commission.
Preparations for the INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITION of 1851 continue to be made.
It is stated that about £50,000 has been subscribed toward the grand
Industrial Exhibition, and nearly 200 local committees formed to
promote. A project has been started to connect with it a religious
congress of the Christians of all nations. To questioning in Parliament,
it has been answered by the Minister that no government supply was
contemplated beyond the expenses of the Royal Commission. The various
German Powers have united, and the Commission in London has apportioned
100,000 square feet of space to the service of the German exhibitors
generally, 60,000 square feet being reserved for the States of the
Zoll-Verein 30,000 for Austria, and 10,000 for the North German States
and the Hanse Towns.
* * * * *
The transactions of the London SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES for the month
present nothing worthy of record. The Zoological Society has received a
new and valuable collection of animals, and among them the first live
hippopotamus ever brought to Europe.--Letters from Mr. LAYARD, who is
prosecuting his researches in the East, have been received to the 18th
of March, in which he mentions the Arab reports of remarkable
antiquities in the desert of Khabour, which have never been visited by
European footsteps, and toward the exploration of which he was just
setting out, with an escort of Arab Sheiks and their followers, in all,
to the number of seventy or eighty in company. During his absence on
this new track, the excavations at Nimrood are to be continued by the
parties employed on that work, which has recently furnished interesting
acquisitions to Mr. Layard's collection. One important inscription is
mentioned, and more winged-lions and bulls.
The Times has an account of a new invention for extinguishing fires, the
work of Mr. Phillips--the agent used being a mixture of gas and vapor. A
public experiment was made with it, at which a compartment of a large
open building, quite twenty feet high inside, was fitted up with
partitions and temporary joisting of light wood, well soaked with pitch
and turpentine, and overhung besides with rags and shavings soaked in
the like manner. The torch was applied to this erection, and the flames,
which ascended immediately, at length roared with a vehemence which
drove the spectators back to a distance of forty feet, and were already
beyond the power of water. The inventor then brought forward one of his
hand machines, and threw out a volume of gaseous vapor, which in half a
minute entirely suppressed all flame and combustion; and to show that
the vapor which now filled the space was quite innoxious, Mr. Phillips
mounted into the loft, and passed and repassed through the midst of it
with a lighted candle in his hand. The machine with which this effect
was accomplished, was rather larger than a good sized coffee-pot, and
consisted of three tin cases, one within another, and mutually
communicating. There was a small quantity of water in the bottom of the
machine, and in the centre case was a composite cake, of the size and
color of peat, containing in the middle of it a phial of sulphuric acid
and chlorate of potash. In order to put the machine into action this
phial is broken, and a gaseous vapor is generated so rapidly and in such
quantity that it immediately rushes out from a lateral spout with great
impetuosity Mr. Phillips explained that a machine of any size could be
made according to the purpose for which it was intended.
Some recent experiments on light, in Paris, have attracted a good deal
of attention in the scientific circles. M. Foucault is said to have
practically demonstrated that light travels less rapidly through water
than through air, though he made his experiments with instruments
devised by M. Arago, and mainly under his direction. The importance of
the discovery may be judged of from the fact that for the last twelve
years M. Arago has been pondering over it, and on the means of effecting
it.
Experiments have been made on the means of protecting the hands against
molten metal. M. Corne, in a paper submitted to the Academy of Sciences,
thus details them:
"Having determined on investigating the question, whether the employment
of liquid sulphurous acid for moistening the hands would produce a
sensation of coldness, when they are immersed in the melted metal, I
immersed my hands, previously moistened with sulphurous acid, in the
melted lead, and experienced a sensation of decided cold. I repeated the
experiment of immersing the hand in melted lead and in fused cast-iron.
Before experimenting with the melted iron, I placed a stick, previously
moistened with water, in the stream of liquid metal, and on withdrawing
it found it to be almost as wet as it was before, scarcely any of the
moisture was evaporated. The moment a dry piece of wood was placed in
contact with the heated metal, combustion took place. M. Covlet and I
then dipped our hands into vessels of the liquid metal, and passed our
fingers several times backward and forward through a stream of metal
flowing from the furnace, the heat from the radiation of the fused metal
being at the same time almost unbearable. We varied these experiments
for upward of two hours; and Madame Covlet, who assisted at these
experiments, permitted her child, a girl of nine years of age, to dip
her hand in a crucible of red hot metal with impunity. We experimented
on the melted iron, both with our hands quite dry, and also when
moistened with water, alcohol, and ether. The same results were obtained
as with melted lead, and each of us experienced a sensation of cold when
employing sulphurous acid."
A circular from Prof. Schumacher has brought an announcement of the
discovery of a new telescopic comet, by Dr. Peterson, at the Royal
Observatory of Altona, on the 1st of May. "Unfavorable weather," says
Mr. Hind, writing to the _Times_, "prevented any accurate observation
that evening, but on the following morning at 11 o'clock, mean time, the
position was in right ascension 19h 24m 8s, and north
declination 71° 19' 34". The comet is therefore situate in the
constellation Draco. The right ascension diminishes about 48" and the
declination increases about 8' in the space of one day.
The LITERARY INTELLIGENCE of the month comprises the issue of no books
of very great pretensions. The _Autobiography of Leigh Hunt_ was just
ready for publication, and from the extracts given in the preceding
pages of this Magazine, our readers will readily judge it to be a book
of more than ordinary interest. It is full of anecdote and incident,
often trivial in themselves, but sketched with that _naiveté_ and warmth
of manner which constitute the charm of whatever HUNT writes. It will be
a favorite with summer readers. Two octavo volumes of Selections from
_Modern State Trials_, by Mr. TOWNSEND, have been published: they
comprise only five state trials properly so called, the rest being
trials for murder, forgery, dueling, &c. The book is interesting and
eminently readable. General KLAPKA'S _Memoirs of the War in Hungary_
have been published, and attract the attention of the critical pen. The
author was one of the leading generals in that gallant but unsuccessful
struggle; and his opinions of the men engaged in it, and the causes of
its failure, are therefore entitled to notice and respect. He regards
the raising of the siege of Komorn as the turning point in the campaign.
He speaks of KOSSUTH and GÖRGEY as the two great spirits of the war--the
one a civilian, the other a soldier. The Athenæum condenses his views
concerning them very successfully. Kossuth, according to him was a great
and generous man, of noble heart and fervid patriotism, at once an
enthusiast and a statesman, gifted with "a mysterious power" over "the
hearts of his countrymen;" possibly, however, of too melancholic and
spiritual a temperament for the crisis, and unfortunately a civilian, so
that notwithstanding his "marvelous influence to rouse and bring into
action the hidden energies of the masses," he could not "give them a
military organization;" Görgey, on the other hand, an able, hard-headed
soldier, believing only in battalions, and capable of using them well,
but wanting enthusiasm, without great principle, without even
patriotism, taciturn and suspicious, chafing against authority, and
aiming throughout chiefly at his own ends in the struggle, wanting that
breadth of intellect or strength of courage that might have made his
selfishness splendid in its achievement. Had Kossuth had the military
training of Görgey, or had Görgey had the heart of Kossuth; or, finally,
had there been a perfect co-operation between the two men and the
parties which they represented, Hungary might have been saved. Nor, so
far as Kossuth was concerned, was there any obstacle to such
co-operation. His disinterestedness, as it led him at last to resign all
into the hands of Görgey, would have led him to do so, had it been
necessary, at first. But Perezel and the other generals, who were
friends of Kossuth, disliked Görgey; never had full trust in him, and
even accused him from the first of treachery. Görgey is alive and rich;
the earth covers the dead bodies of many of his former comrades, pierced
by the bullet or strangled by the ignominious rope, others live exiles
in various lands. Of these last is Kossuth. There is something striking
in the unanimity with which all testimonies combine as to the nobility
of this man. Even Görgey, his foe, once wrote to General
Klapka--"Kossuth alone is a classical and generous character. It is a
pity he is not a soldier." General Klapka's own book is an involuntary
commentary on this one text--"O that Kossuth had been a soldier!"
A volume of selections from papers contributed to the _Edinburgh
Review_, by Mr. HENRY ROGERS, has been published. They relate chiefly to
questions of religious interest, or have an indirect bearing upon
religious philosophy. Comparing them with the similar papers of Sir
James Stephen, a critical journal says, the author is less wide and
comprehensive in his range, in expression less eloquent and original,
but more practical in his views. He attacks the two extremes of
Tractarianism and Skepticism; gives large and sound expositions of Dr.
Whately's views of criminal jurisprudence; and attempts special
biographical sketches, such as Fuller's, Luther's, Pascal's, and
Plato's.
The fourth volume of SOUTHEY'S _Life and Correspondence_ has been
issued, and sustains the interest of this very attractive work.
Southey's Letters are among the best in the language, easy, unaffected,
full of genial, intelligent criticisms upon men, books, and things; and
abounding in attractive glimpses of the lives and characters of the
eminent literary men who were his contemporaries. The new volume
mentions that after Southey's acrimonious letters to Mr. William Smith,
M.P. for Norwich, appeared, he was offered the editorship of the London
Times, with a salary of £2000, and a share of the paper, but declined
it.
The readers of the _Excursion_ will remember that it was announced as
the second part of a poem in three parts, called the _Recluse_. The
first part was biographical, "conducting the history of the author's
mind to the point when he was emboldened to hope that his faculties were
sufficiently matured for entering upon the arduous labor which he had
proposed to himself;" and the third part consisted mainly of meditations
in the author's own person. It is now stated that the poem has been left
in the hands of the author's nephew, Rev. Dr. Christopher Wordsworth,
with directions that it should be published after his decease, together
with such biographical notices as may be requisite to illustrate his
writings. It is in fourteen cantos. A meeting of the personal friends
and admirers of Wordsworth has been held, to take steps to erect a
monument to his memory.
There have been published a large number of books of travel, among which
the following are mentioned:--Lord Chesney has issued the first portion
of his narrative of the Government _Expedition to the Euphrates_; and a
certain Count Sollogub has recorded his traveling impressions of Young
Russia, in a lively little book called _The Tarantas_. An English
artist, lately resident in America, has described his _Adventures in
California_; and Mr. Robert Baird, a Scotch invalid traveling for
health, with strong party prepossessions, but shrewd observant habits,
has published two volumes on the _West Indies and North America in
1849_. Also, pictures of travel in the Canadas, in a book called the
_Shoe and Canoe_, by the Secretary to the Boundary Commissioners, Dr.
Bagley; a very curious and complete revelation of Eastern life, in a
_Two Years' Residence in a Levantine Family_, described by Mr. Bayle St.
John; a peep into _Nuremberg and Franconia_, by Mr. Whiting; a summer
ramble through _Auvergne and Piedmont_, by the intelligent Secretary of
the Royal Society, Mr. Weld; the record of a brief holiday in Spain,
_Gazpacho_, by a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; _Notes from
Nineveh_, by a clergyman who has lately had religious duties in the
East; and a satisfactory and compendious compilation called _Nineveh,
and Persepolis_, by one of the officials of the British Museum.
An article in the Quarterly Review, on the _Flight of Louis Philippe and
his Family_, in the Revolution, has attracted a good deal of attention
in Paris. It was written by Mr. Croker, from materials supplied by the
ex-king himself, and denounces Lamartine and the leading actors of the
revolution, with the utmost bitterness. Lamartine has written a reply to
it, the chief object of which is to refute one of the principal
assertions of Mr. Croker, by proving that he, Lamartine, not only did
not take measures to prevent the flight of Louis Philippe and the
members of his family, but that he actually exerted himself actively to
have them placed out of the reach of danger. LEDRU ROLLIN has occupied
his leisure, during his exile in London, by writing a book on the
_Decadence of England_, which abounds in the most extravagant statements
and predictions. It is denounced, in the strongest terms, as a worthless
compound of malice and credulity.
* * * * *
The OBITUARY for the month embraces the name of M. GAY-LUSSAC, one of
the great scientific men of Paris. The _Presse_ says that few men have
led a life so useful, and marked by so many labors. There is no branch
of the physical and chemical sciences which is not indebted to him for
some important discovery. Alone, or in conjunction with other eminent
men, particularly with M. Thénard and M. de Humboldt, he carried his
spirit of investigation into them all. At a very early age he was
elected a member of the Academy of Sciences. In 1810, says M. Pouillet,
speaking in the name of that academy, when the university opened, at
length, its public courses of high teaching, it sought to associate in
that object the most eminent scientific men of France, and M.
Gay-Lussac, though very young, recommended himself to it by the double
title of chemist and natural philosopher. "M. Gay-Lussac was already
famous by his discovery of the fundamental laws of the expansion of gas
and vapors; by a balloon ascent the most important and almost the only
one of which the history of science has any record to keep; and for many
works on chemistry which tended to lay the bases on which that science
was soon afterward to be established." M. Gay-Lussac was a peer of
France.
The Brussels papers mention the premature death of M. P. SOUYET, the
eminent chemist, at the early age of thirty-two. M. Souyet was professor
of chemistry at the _Musée de l'Industrie_, and at the Royal Veterinary
School at Brussels. His funeral, on the 6th inst., was attended by the
most eminent scientific men in Brussels; and M. Quetelet delivered an
address, in which he briefly enumerated the important discoveries and
chemical investigations that have rendered the name of M. Souyet so well
known. M. Souyet had written several valuable chemical works.
The EMPEROR OF CHINA, TAU-KWANG (the Lustre of Reason), "departed upon
the great journey, and mounted upward on the dragon, to be a guest on
high"--in other words died, on the 25th of February, in the sixty-ninth
year of his age, and thirtieth of his reign. His death is said to have
been caused by the fatigue he underwent at the funeral ceremonies of the
late Empress-Dowager, his mother-in-law. The nomination of a successor
in China rests always with the Emperor, and before his death Tau-Kwang
decreed that his fourth and only surviving son should succeed him. He
ascended the throne the day of the Emperor's death, and is to reign
under the title of Sze-hing. He is only nineteen years of age. Keying,
the former Viceroy at Canton, is appointed his principal guardian, and
will no doubt hold a high and an influential position in the Cabinet. It
is not likely that any material change in the policy of the Government
will take place, but from the enlightened character of Keying and his
knowledge of foreigners, the tendency of any new measures will probably
be toward a more liberal course.
The EARL OF ROSCOMMON died on the 15th inst. at Blackrock, near Dublin,
in the fifty-second year of his age.
MAJOR-GENERAL SIR JAMES SUTHERLAND, of the East India Company's Service,
died suddenly on the 15th, at his house. He had enjoyed perfect health
up to the day of his death, when he invited a large number of friends to
dinner. He was giving instructions to his butler with respect to the
wines in his drawing-room, and Lady Sutherland was standing near him. He
suddenly grasped her shoulder, fell to the ground, and died in a few
minutes. He was in the sixty-sixth year of his age, and had seen a great
deal of service in India.
The "Scottish Press" records the demise of MRS. JEFFREY, the widow of
one whose death was so recently the cause of an almost universal sorrow.
Shortly after Lord Jeffrey's decease, his widow, affected in a more than
ordinary degree by the sad event, broke up her establishment, and took
up her abode with Mr. and Mrs. Empson, her son-in-law and daughter.
Though naturally cheerful, her spirits never recovered the shock she
sustained by the death of her distinguished partner, whom she has not
survived four months. Mrs. Jeffrey was born in America, and was the
grandniece of the celebrated John Wilkes, and second wife of the late
Lord Jeffrey, to whom she was married in 1813.
* * * * *
Affairs in FRANCE are without change. The Assembly was proceeding with
the bill for restricting the suffrage, and some of its sections had been
adopted. No doubt was entertained of its final passage. It meets,
however, with stern opposition, and will lay the foundation for a
settled popular discontent, highly unfavorable to the permanence of the
government or the tranquillity of the Republic. No immediate outbreak is
apprehended, as the preparations of the government are too formidable to
allow it the least chance of success. The government has adopted very
stringent measures against the opposition press. On the 14th, M. Boulé,
the great printer of the Rue de Coq-Heron, was deprived of his license
as a printer. He was the printer of the "Voix du Peuple," the
"République," the "Estafette," and several other papers. The authorities
seized all the presses, and placed seals on them. In consequence of this
step, the Editors issued a joint letter explaining how their papers were
prevented from appearing. The editor of the "Voix du Peuple" was brought
again before the tribunals on the same day for attacks on the
government. In the one case the sentence previously pronounced against
him of a year's imprisonment and a fine of 4000f. for an attack on M.
Fould's budget was confirmed, and for the other he was sentenced to a
year's imprisonment and a fine of 5000f. Courtois and the Abbé Chatel
have been convicted by juries, of inflammatory speeches at electoral
meetings. The former was condemned to a year's imprisonment and 1000f.
fine, and two years' more imprisonment if the fine be not paid. The Abbé
Chatel has a year's imprisonment and 500f. fine. It seems rather
surprising that the government should obtain verdicts against the
Socialists, considering how Socialism has spread in Paris.
The French Embassador having been recalled from St. James's, General la
Hitte, the Minister of War, read to the National Assembly on the 16th, a
letter he had written to the French Embassador at London, in consequence
of infraction, by England, of the conditions on which France had agreed
to act as mediator in the affairs of Greece. The letter, after a summary
of the circumstances of the misunderstanding, and the demand that it
should be set to rights, proceeded to say: "This demand not having been
listened to, it has appeared to us that the prolongation of your sojourn
at London is not compatible with the dignity of the Republic. The
President has ordered me to invite you to return to France, after having
accredited M. Marescalchi in quality of Chargé d'Affaires," and
concludes, "You will have the goodness to read this present dispatch to
Lord Palmerston." This announcement was received by the Right with loud
acclamations, the Left, or Mountain party remaining silent.
* * * * *
In GERMANY the Erfurt Parliament, having finished the revisal of its
proposed Constitution for the German Union, dissolved itself, and has
been succeeded by two separate Convocations. The one is held in
Frankfort, and consists of the representatives of the old Germanic
confederation, convoked by the Emperor of Austria, with the object of
re-organizing that confederation. This conference includes all the
secondary States of the old confederation except Oldenburg and Frankfort
itself, though the assembly is held within its own walls. The other,
held at Berlin, was assembled by the king of Prussia, and consisted of
twenty-one heads of sovereign houses, with representatives of the three
Hanse towns, Hamburg, Bremen, and Lubeck. This last convention has
finished its sittings, and the members, previous to separating, were
entertained by the king at a banquet on the 16th, when his majesty
addressed them in a speech expressive of his satisfaction with their
proceedings.
On the 22d _An Attempt was Made on the Life_ of the King of Prussia, by
a Serjeant of artillery named Sesseloge, who fired a pistol at him as he
was setting out for Potsdam, and wounded him slightly in the arm. The
assassin was immediately apprehended.
* * * * *
The only political news from SPAIN during the month, related to some
palace intrigues, in which the Queen, King-Consort, and General Narvaez
were concerned. One evening in the last week of April the King suddenly
notified to General Narvaez and the rest of the cabinet his intention of
quitting Madrid in order not to be present at the accouchement of the
Queen. After exhausting all means of persuasion to induce him to change
his purpose, but which were of no avail, a council of ministers was
held, in which it was decided to oppose by force the King's departure.
His Majesty was placed under arrest. Sentries were stationed at the door
of his apartment, and the King remained a prisoner during four hours, at
the end of which time his Majesty capitulated, and even consented to
accompany the Queen in an open carriage in her usual evening drive on
the Prado.
After a _Drought of Five Years_, the province of Murcia has been visited
by a copious rain. It was curious to observe the young children who had
never seen rain in their lives, evince as much alarm as if some
frightful accident had happened. Rain also has fallen in the vast
"Huerta," or garden-land of Valencia: the simple inhabitants of the
villages, in the height of their joy, have carried their tutelary saints
about the streets with bands of rustic music.
At about a league from Saragossa a _Powder-mill exploded_ and many lives
were lost. Parts of human bodies, remnants of clothing, and the remains
of beasts of burden, were found scattered in every direction. The
edifice was shattered to pieces.
* * * * *
Since the Pope has established himself in ROME, that capital has been
very quiet. The French commandant, General Baraguay d'Hilliers, has
returned to Paris, but the French troops remain. The Pope adheres to his
high-handed measures of reaction. Rome is full of mysterious rumors, not
entitled, however, to much credit. The Pope is accused of an attempt to
escape from that city, and his continuance there is only attributed to
the vigilance with which his movements are watched by the French.
Tuscany is about to be occupied by 14,000 Austrian troops, the time of
occupation to be determined by the will and convenience of the Cabinet
of Vienna. There is a rumor that, as a counterbalance. Savoy is to be
occupied by a French army. It is feared that plans are in agitation for
the political enthrallment of all Italy.
LITERARY NOTICES.
THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACES PROVED TO BE THE DOCTRINE OF
SCRIPTURE, REASON, AND SCIENCE. By the Rev. Thomas Smyth, D.D.
New York: George P. Putnam. 12mo, pp. 404.
The question discussed in the present volume, is one that has excited
great attention among modern savans, and more recently, has obtained a
fresh interest from the speculations concerning it by the popular
scientific lecturer Professor Agassiz of Harvard University. In many
respects, Dr. Smyth has shown himself admirably qualified for the task
he has undertaken. He brings to the discussion of the subject, the
resources of great and various learning, the mature results of elaborate
investigation, a familiarity with the labors of previous writers, and a
lively and attractive style of composition. The argument from Scripture
is dwelt upon at considerable length, and though presented in a forcible
manner, betrays the presence of a certain tincture of professional zeal,
which will tend to vitiate the effect on the mind of the scientific
reader. Under the head of the Former Civilization of Black Races of Men,
a great variety of curious facts are adduced, showing the original
sagacity and advancement in all worldly knowledge and science, by which
the family of Ham was distinguished. The testimony of a southern divine
of such high eminence as Dr. Smyth, to the primitive equality in the
intellectual faculties of the negro and European races, is not a little
remarkable, and speaks well for his candor and breadth of comprehension.
The discussion of the origin of the varieties in the human race is
conducted with great ingenuity and copious erudition, but it must be
admitted, hardly succeeds in making out a case to the satisfaction of
the inquirer, who regards the subject only in the light of history and
philosophy.
The influence of the theory which he opposes, on the relations of the
Southern States, is considered by Dr. Smyth to be of a different
character from that set forth by many writers. He believes that it would
be suicidal to the South in the maintenance of her true position toward
her colored population. The diversity of the Black and White races was
never admitted by the fathers of the country. They always recognized the
colored race which had been providentially among them for two centuries
and a half as fellow-beings with the same original attributes, the same
essential character, and the same immortal destiny. The introduction of
a novel theory on the subject, Dr. Smyth maintains, would be in the
highest degree impolitic and dangerous, removing from both master and
servant the strongest bonds which now unite them, and by which they are
restrained from licentious, immoral, and cruel purposes.
Without reference to many statements, which will produce the widest
latitude of opinion in regard both to their soundness and their
accuracy, the work of Dr. Smyth may be commended as a treatise of the
highest importance in the scientific discussion to which it is devoted,
abounding in materials of inestimable value to the student, filled with
the proofs of rare cultivation and scholar-like refinement, and every
way creditable to the attainments and the ability of the author and to
the literature of the South.
HISTORICAL VIEW OF THE LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE OF THE SLAVIC
NATIONS; WITH A SKETCH OF THEIR POPULAR POETRY. By Talvi. With
a preface by Edward Robinson, D.D., LL.D. New York: George P.
Putnam. 12mo., pp. 412.
It is rarely that a subject is treated with the profound investigation,
vigorous analysis, and intelligent comprehensiveness which are exhibited
in the discussion of the interesting literary topics to which the
present work is devoted. The authoress, whose name is concealed in the
mystic word Talvi, is understood to be the lady of Rev. Professor
Robinson, and her rare accomplishments in various departments of
learning have long since established her intellectual reputation in the
most cultivated European circles. Usually written in her native German
language, her productions are perhaps not so extensively known in this
country, although few of our educated scholars are ignorant of her
researches in a province of literature with which her name has become,
to a great degree, identified.
The volume now published is characterized by the extent and thoroughness
of its investigations, its acute and judicious criticisms, its
warm-hearted recognition of true poetry, even in an humble garb, and the
force and facility of its style. The last trait is quite remarkable,
considering the writer is using a foreign language. There is little,
either in the translations or the original portion of the work, to
remind us that it is the production of one to whom the language is not
native.
After describing the old, ecclesiastical Slavic Literature, the
authoress proceeds to the literary monuments of the Eastern and Western
Slavi, giving an elaborate account of the Russian, Servian, Bohemian,
and Polish literatures, with glances at the achievements of several less
important branches of the great Slavic race. In the course of this
discussion, a great variety of rare and curious information is
presented, of high importance to the student of ethnography and history,
and accompanied with complete and lucid references to the original
sources. The most attractive feature of the work to the general reader
will doubtless be the sketch of the popular poetry of the Slavic
nations, illustrated with abundant specimens of songs and ballads, many
of which are marked with a strong natural pathos and tenderness, and all
of them possessing a certain rustic simplicity, which is usually of a
very pleasing character, and seldom offensive.
HINTS TOWARD REFORMS, in Lectures, Addresses, and other
Writings. By Horace Greeley. New York: Harper and Brothers.
12mo pp. 400.
A handsome volume, consisting principally of Lectures delivered before
popular Lyceums and Young Men's Associations, with several brief Essays
on subjects of popular interest. The distinguished author presents his
views on the various topics which come under discussion with inimitable
frankness and good humor, and in the fresh, flowing, unaffected style,
which gives such a charm to the productions of his pen, even with
readers who most strongly dissent from his conclusions. Among the
questions considered in this volume are The Emancipation of Labor, The
Ideal and the Actual of Life, The Formation of Character, The Social
Architects, Alcoholic Liquors, Tobacco, The Trade Reform, The Church and
the Age, Humanity, and several others of perhaps still more general
interest. The admirers of the author, as well as all who are interested
in the question of Social Reform, whether ranking themselves among the
Conservatives or Progressives, will welcome this work as the only
compact and systematic expression of his peculiar theories, now before
the public, and as a valuable manual for reference on many points which
engage a large share of attention at the present day.
ANTONINA; OR, THE FALL OF ROME. A Romance of the Fifth Century.
By W. Wilkie Collins. New York: Harper and Brothers. 8vo, pp.
160.
It is long since the English press has sent forth a more truly classical
and magnificent romance, than the present narrative of some of the
thrilling scenes which attended the downfall of the Roman Empire. The
author has been known heretofore by the biography of his father, the
celebrated historical and landscape painter, the friend of Coleridge and
Allston; but that work gives no promise of the splendor of imagination,
and the rare constructive power which are shown in the composition of
Antonina. It is one of those rich and gorgeous portraitures, glowing
with life and radiant with beauty, which make a profound impression on
their first exhibition, and long continue to haunt the memory with their
images of mingled loveliness and terror.
* * * * *
D. and J. Sadlier have issued a translation of the Abbé Martinet's
celebrated _Solution of Great Problems placed within the Reach of every
Mind_, with a preface by the Rt. Rev. Bishop of New York, Dr. Hughes.
This work holds a high rank in modern Catholic literature, and is
brought before the American public by Bishop Hughes in a warm
introductory encomium. It discusses many of the leading religious
questions of the day in a racy and pointed style, and while opposing
what the author deems the errors of Protestantism in general, reserves
its hottest fire for modern Pantheism, Socialism, Rationalism, and other
kindred innovations, which he regards as gaseous exhalations from the
bottomless pit, taking a visible form in these latter days. From the
well-known ability of the author, and the spicy relish of his pen, the
work is adapted to make a sensation beyond the pale of the Catholic
Church, without taking in account the high-toned sarcasm of the preface,
in which department of composition the talents of Bishop Hughes are
unquestionable.
Harper and Brothers have issued the second number of Lossing's _Field
Book of the Revolution_, a work, which from the novelty of its plan and
the ability of its execution, has already proved a general favorite with
the reading public. It combines the authenticity of history with the
freshness of personal narrative, and in the richness and beauty of its
embellishments is hardly surpassed by any of the serials of the day.
The same house have published an original translation of Lamartine's
_Past, Present, and Future of the French Republic_, which will be read
with interest on account of the character of the author, and the light
it throws on the practical workings of Democracy in France, though it
has little of the fiery rhetoric of most of his former writings.
Harper and Brothers have issued a reprint of Dr. Lardner's _Railway
Economy in Europe and America_, a work overflowing with scientific,
statistical, and practical details, and which will be considered as
essential to all who wish to comprehend the subject, in its various
bearings whether engineers, stockholders, or travelers, as fire and
water to the locomotive. Dr. Lardner has brought together the results of
long and laborious research, and many portions of his descriptive
narrative are as entertaining as a novel, and more so.
D. Appleton & Co. have published _The Lone Dove_, an Indian story of the
revolutionary period, redolent of sentimentality and romance run wild,
betraying a great waste of power on the part of the anonymous writer,
who has evidently more talent than is made use of to advantage in the
present work.
_Mezzofanti's Method applied to the Study of the French Language_, by J.
Romer, published by the same house, is a work of great philological
interest, on account of the curious analogies which it describes, and
contains an excellent collection of specimens from French poets and
prose writers, but its value as a practical manual for the teacher can
be determined only by use.
The _Ojibway Conquest_, by Kah-ge-gah-gah-bowh, or George Copway, issued
by G. Putnam, will find a place among the curiosities of literature as
the production of a native Indian Chief, whose muse has been inspired by
the forest and stream of his original haunts, without having incurred a
large debt to the influence of civilization. Copway is an exemplary
Christian and an intelligent man, but he will get less fame from his
poetry than from his descent.
_Six Months in the Gold Mines_, by E. Gould Buffum, from the press of
Lea and Blanchard, is one of the most readable books which have sprung
up under the California excitement, the author having been familiar with
the country before the gold fever had broken out. His style is
straight-forward and pleasant, showing more of the soldier and
adventurer than the scholar, but none the worse for that. His
information appears to have been collected with great care, when it was
not gained by personal observation, and has the outward and inward signs
of authenticity, to a very satisfactory degree. The book can not fail to
be acceptable to all who have one foot in California, as well as to the
few readers who are not in that condition.
Crocker and Brewster, Boston, have published an admirable treatise,
entitled _Astronomy, or the World as It Is and as It Appears_,
understood to be from the pen of a highly intelligent lady of that city.
It is equally excellent for the chaste beauty of its style, the
clearness of its scientific expositions, and the completeness and
accuracy of the information which it presents.
W. B. Smith and Co., Cincinnati, have published a large _Treatise on the
Principal Diseases of the Interior Valley of North America_, by Daniel
Drake, M.D., which discusses the subject with great learning, and in a
popular style. It can hardly fail to take the rank of a standard
authority in the important department which it treats.
Summer Fashions.
[Illustration: FIG. 1]
FIG. 1. CARRIAGE COSTUME.--Dress of bright apple-green silk; the skirt
with three deep flounces pinked at the edges. The corsage high and
plain. Mantelet of very pale lilac silk, trimmed with two rows of lace
de laine of the same color, and each row of lace surmounted by
passementerie. The lace extends merely round the back part of the
mantelet, and the fronts are trimmed with passementerie only. Bonnet of
white crinoline, with rows of lilac ribbon set on in bouillonnées. The
bonnet is lined with white crape, and the under-trimming consists of
bouquets of lilac and white flowers. Straw-colored kid gloves. White
silk parasol.
FIG. 2. BRIDAL DRESS FOR THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY.--Robe of white poult de
soie. The skirt very full, and ornamented in front with five rows of
lace, finished at each end with bows of white satin. The rows of lace
are of graduated lengths, the lower row being about a quarter and a half
long, and the upper one not more than five or six inches. The corsage is
high at the back, but open in front nearly as low as the waist, and
edged round with a fall of lace, narrowing to a point in front. Within
the corsage is worn a chemisette, composed of rows of lace falling
downward, and finished at the throat by a band of insertion and an
edging standing up. The sleeves are demi-long and loose at the lower
part, and the under-sleeves are composed of three broad rows of lace.
The hair in waved bandeaux on the forehead, and the back hair partly
plaited and partly curled, two long ringlets dropping on each side of
the neck. Wreath of orange blossom, jasmine, and white roses. Long
bridal vail of Brussels net.
FIG. 3.--The revival of an old fashion has recently excited the
attention of the _haut ton_ abroad. A specimen of the style is given in
the Engraving, _fig._ 3. It is designed chiefly for a rich riding-dress,
it being too long in the skirt for the promenade, and not convenient for
the drawing-room. It is called the Moldavian Style; a _petite veste_ of
dark green cloth entirely covered with an embroidery of lace imitating
_guipure_ royal, and displaying the shape to the greatest perfection.
The skirt is very ample and cut in a novel manner so as to fall in long
folds like an antique drapery. The front is ornamented with an
apron-trimming of deep lace. The sleeves are demi-long; the hands and
wrists covered by long white gloves. When in full dress for the saddle,
a gray beaver hat is worn, the brim low in front, and turned up at the
sides, and ornamented with a long, twisted ostrich feather; cambric
collar and _manchettes_ (ruffles) each closed by a double button of
rubies or other precious stones.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume
1, No. 2, July, 1850., by Various
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